Henry VI, Part 3 - Performance

Performance

After the original 1592 performances, the complete text of 3 Henry VI seems to have been very rarely acted. The first definite performance in England after Shakespeare's day didn't occur until 1906, when F.R. Benson presented the play at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in a production of Shakespeare's two tetralogies, performed over eight nights. As far as can be ascertained, this was not only the first performance of the octology, but was also the first definite performance of both the tetralogy and the trilogy. Benson himself played Henry and his wife, Constance Benson, played Margaret.

In 1952, Douglas Seale directed a production of 3 Henry VI at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, following a successful production of 2 Henry VI in 1951. 1 Henry VI would follow in 1953. All three plays starred Paul Daneman as Henry and Rosalind Boxall as Margaret, with 3 Henry VI featuring Alan Bridges as Edward and Edgar Wreford as Richard. Although little was removed from the text, it did end differently to the written play. After Edward has spoken his last lines, everyone leaves the stage except Richard, who walks towards the throne, then turns and looks out to the audience, speaking the first thirty lines of his opening speech from Richard III (from "Now is the winter of our discontent" to "I am determin'd to prove a villain"), at which point the curtain falls. Additionally, in this production, Boxall as Margaret fully participated in the Battle of Tewkesbury, which was considered a bold move at the time.

A production which made much of its unedited status came in 1977, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, where Terry Hands presented all three Henry VI plays with Alan Howard as Henry and Helen Mirren as Margaret. Although the production was only moderately successful at the box office, it was critically lauded at the time for Alan Howard's unique portrayal of Henry. Howard adopted historical details concerning the real Henry's madness into his performance, presenting the character as constantly on the brink of a mental and emotional breakdown. Possibly as a reaction to a recent adaptation of the trilogy under the general title Wars of the Roses, which was strongly political, Hands attempted to ensure his own production was entirely apolitical; "Wars of the Roses was a study in power politics: its central image was the conference table, and Warwick, the scheming king-maker, was the central figure. But that's not Shakespeare. Shakespeare goes far beyond politics. Politics is a very shallow science." Aside from Howard and Mirren, the production starred Alfred Lynch as Edward and Anton Lesser as Richard.

In 1994, Katie Mitchell directed the play as a stand-alone piece for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at The Other Place theatre in Stratford, under the title Henry VI: The Battle for the Throne. Starring Jonathan Firth as Henry, Ruth Mitchell as Margaret, Tom Smith as Richard and Lloyd Owen as Edward, the play added dialogue (primarily anti-war material) from Gorboduc, Richard II, 2 Henry VI and Richard III. Mitchell cut all on-stage violence, resulting in York, Rutland, Prince Edward and Henry all being killed off-stage. The introduction of the head of Somerset was also removed, with the play beginning instead at line 25, "This is the palace of the fearful king." Also removed was much of Margaret's speech to rouse her army prior to Tewkesbury.

Under the direction of Michael Boyd, the play was presented at the Swan Theatre in Stratford in 2000, with David Oyelowo as Henry, Fiona Bell as Margaret, Tom Beard as Edward and Aidan McArdle as Richard. The play was presented with the other five history plays (Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V and Richard III) to form a complete eight-part history cycle under the general title This England: The Histories (the first time the RSC had ever attempted to stage the eight plays as one sequence). This England: The Histories was revived in 2006, as part of the Complete Works festival at the Courtyard Theatre, with the Henry VI plays again directed by Boyd, and starring Chuk Iwuji as Henry, Katy Stephens as Margaret, Forbes Masson as Edward and Jonathan Slinger as Richard. When the Complete Works wrapped in March 2007, the history plays remained on stage, under the shorter title The Histories, as part of a two-year thirty-four actor ensemble production. 3 Henry VI was performed under the title Henry VI, Part 3: The Chaos. At the end of the two-year programme, the entire octology was performed over a four-day period under the title The Glorious Moment; Richard II was staged on a Thursday evening, followed by the two Henry IV plays on Friday afternoon and evening, the three Henry VI plays on Saturday (two afternoon performances and one evening performance), and Richard III on Sunday evening.

Boyd's production garnered much attention at the time because of his interpolations and additions to the text. Most notably, Boyd introduced a new character into the trilogy. Called The Keeper, the character never speaks, but upon the death of each major character, the Keeper (played by Edward Clayton in 2000, and by Anthony Bunsee in 2006/2007), wearing all red, would walk onto stage and approach the body. The actor playing the body would then stand up and allow himself to be led off-stage by the figure. The production was also particularly noted for its realistic violence. According to Robert Gore-Langton of the Daily Express, in his review of the original 2000 production, "blood from a severed arm sprayed over my lap. A human liver slopped to the floor by my feet. An eyeball scudded past, then a tongue."

Outside the UK, the first major American performance was in 1935 at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, directed by Gilmore Brown, as part of a production of all ten Shakespearean histories (the two tetralogies, preceded by King John and proceeded by Henry VIII). In 2010 in New York City, the independent theatre company Wide Eyed Productions, in association with Columbia University, mounted a stand-alone production of the play at the East 13th Street Theatre (home of Classic Stage Company). The production was directed by Adam Marple and featured Nat Cassidy as Henry, Candace Thompson as Margaret, Sky Seals as Edward and Ben Newman as Richard. It was noted as being a rare opportunity to see the play on its own and was well received – particularly for its staging of the conclusion, in which Henry's corpse remained onstage, doused in a steady rain of blood, throughout Edward IV's final scene, after which a naked and feral Richard bolts onstage and delivers the opening lines of Richard III, before literally eating the throne. The play also featured a huge portrait of Henry V wallpapered to the upstage wall that was steadily torn apart over the course of the play.

In Europe, unedited stagings of the play took place at the Weimar Court Theatre in 1857. Directed by Franz von Dingelstedt, it was performed as the seventh part of the octology, with all eight plays staged over a ten day period. A major production was staged at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1873. Jocza Savits directed a production of the tetralogy at the Munich Court Theatre in 1889 and again in 1906. In 1927, Saladin Schmitt presented the unedited octology at the Municipal Theatre in Bochum. Denis Llorca staged the tetralogy as one twelve-hour piece in Carcassonne in 1978 and in Créteil in 1979. In 1999, director Ruediger Burbach presented 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI at the Zurich Playhouse. This production was unique insofar as a woman (Katharina Schmoelzer) played Henry. Margaret was played by Katharina von Bock.