Henry VIII (All Is True)

Henry VIII (All is True) Presented by the Stratford Festival of Canada at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. August 14-October 29, 2004. Directed by Richard Monette. Design by Ann Curtis. Lights by Kevin Fraser. Sound by Jim Neil. Choreographed by Shona Morris. With Graham Abbey (Henry VIII), Seana McKenna (Katherine), Stephen Russell (Norfolk), Thom Allison (Suffolk), Sara Topham (Anne Bullen), Raymond O'Neill (Buckingham), Ian Deakin (Thomas Lovell), Walter Borden (Wolsey), Keith Dinicol (Campeius), Brian Tree (Cranmer), and others. In directing Henry VIII, Richard Monette focused on the struggles between the three primary characters, and although he filled the stage with peripheral characters and attendants, he let them become a distraction, and he minimized potentially uninteresting scenes. The result was an absorbing study of political power struggles and religious reformation. Monette's production revolved around the interactions between Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry, and Queen Katherine, with the remainder of the cast of thirty-two along the sides or deep upstage. Elaborately costumed in traditional Tudor style, the noblemen wore heavy doublets and tunics of muted color, and the women wore long gowns and head-dresses. The clergymen were adorned in shades of red, the bishops in fiery scarlet robes, the cardinals a bit pinker, and clerics in yet a lighter shade. Monette's stage was crowded but busy, with lesser characters posed and merely ornamental, a courtly audience to the political conflicts. As the production began, the stage was adorned in gold drapery and orange-lit by candelabra. Walter Borden's Wolsey, slight and hunched but with a commanding croak of a voice, consistently deceived the King while disguising his own Macbeth-like ambition within religious vehemence. When Henry shredded the proposed taxation papers during 1.2, Wolsey slithered downstage to stage-whisper to a toady that the word be spread to the people that he had convinced the King to change his mind. Moments later, when Graham Abbey's robust Henry shouted, Break up the court! after demanding divorce from Katherine, Borden's Wolsey wrung his hands downstage center, round-eyed and scheming. The snakish performance drove the first act of the production, but when Wolsey was accused of cardinal sins and endured a chair violently overturned at his feet by his opponents, his humility was less than convincing. Borden's Wolsey let fly the inventory pages that incriminated him, but the magnificent never to hope again speech deserved more power--it has the majesty and tragedy of a man ambitious enough to wish to be Pope--than Borden's rasp as he slumped into a bench at the edge of the stage. …

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