Play on the Road

Five Kings, Part I (adapted by Orson Welles from Shakespeare's King Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II, Henry V; produced by the Theatre Guild Inc.). When Richard Bentley, the greatest English classical scholar of his age, read Alexander Pope's famed translation of the Iliad, he remarked: "A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." In Boston last week, when Orson Welles presented the first half of his much-touted, much-trimmed version of Shakespeare's chronicle plays, certain it was that--pretty or otherwise--Welles should not call it Shakespeare.

Bold and ingenious was the idea of compressing a week's theatre-going into two nights. But not altogether sound: in slashing two-thirds of what Shakespeare wrote, Welles ripped out much that was dull but more that was vital, either in itself or as connective tissue. Even so, were the chronicle plays concerned solely with martial and kingly events, their torso might provide a kind of splendid theatrical pageant. But the chronicle plays do not lend themselves to mere pageantry, for in addition to the huge comic figure of Falstaff, they contain scene after scene of intrigue, domestic life, psychological conflict.

As a result, Part I of Five Kings is a chaotic Shakespearean vaudeville in which the sense of history is conveyed chiefly by having all the characters grow older, and some of them die. The production lacks all style and almost all significance. What might have been a tour de force jumps so fast from one thing to another as to be a non sequitur de force. Often good theatre, it is never good drama, just as Welles's portrayal of the fat knight is often good fun but seldom good Falstaff. Played on a twelve-part revolving stage that keeps circling like a Lazy Susan on a breakfast table, Five Kings is fatally shorn of all stage illusion.

Omitting such a famous scene as Falstaff shamming dead, such a famous character as Owen Glendower, such a famous speech as Henry IV's expostulation to sleep ("Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"), Five Kings "covers" Shakespeare as a two-day Cook's Tour would cover England:

8:54. Visit Mistress Quickly's Inn. See Falstaff, Prince Hal, Bardolph, Poins.

9:31. Good view from the train (no time to get off) of the Justice Shallow country.

9:58. Trip to Shrewsbury. See Hotspur killed. Etc., etc.

With such recent productions as the uncut Hamlet and Welles's Julius Caesar, the theatre has applied grease paint to Shakespeare instead of embalming fluid. But this time Welles has gone too far. He may yet rake in the chips, but to get Five Kings he had to deal with the deuces wild.

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