In the latest Stratford Festival production of this play, these fight scenes achieve the remarkable sense of unreality that one feels while caught in the middle of a battle, a bombing or a hail of bullets. Director Richard Monette and his fight directors, James Binkley and John Stead, supported by lighting designer Steven Hawkins, have captured this mental dislocation, perhaps caused by an overproduction of adrenaline, while avoiding to show an excessive amount of unnecessary blood. Only one of the rebel fighters, the Earl of Northumberland, has blood smeared across his face. The battle is at times a slow dance of death, as just a few men fight in a circling ring of light, shadowed by a slight mist. It achieved the horror of battle without the current penchant for excessive reality — guts and gore at all costs.

It may seem strange to start a review at the end of a play, but the reasons for this are simple. For one, I liked that battle scene because I understood the disconnect; for the other I am unsure if Monette had intended to capture this reality disconnect, or if it is an accidental byproduct of trying to avoid having his Henry IV "played very darkly and cynically," as Monette tells us in the program notes. "I hope I'm not going to give the audience a dark, lugubrious evening. I want it to be funny and vivid: a chronicle rather than a history play."

Funny, I never felt that the first part of the two Henry IV plays was dark. It always contained enough silliness in the form of folks gathered around Sir John Falstaff to act as the counterweight to the more serious business of a king agonizing over his sense of guilt for usurping Richard II — a king who, after all, already had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and considered a second journey just at the beginning of the play that never came about because of affairs of state. Falstaff and his gang also provide enough chuckles to be an equalizer for the rebellious plans by the three Percies: Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, his brother Henry, Earl of Northumberland, and Henry — Hotspur — his son, in conjunction with the Welsh lord, Owen Glendower, the Scottish lord, Archibald, Earl of Douglas, and even the Archbishop of York. And then there is Henry's son, the Prince of Wales, more commonly known to his friends — including Falstaff and his motley lot — as Hal or Harry.

Harry is a rebel in his own way, a rebel against his stern father's ways. He expresses this by hanging around in taverns with Falstaff and carousing, thus gaining an unsavory reputation that makes his father wish his son had been switched with Northumberland's Hotspur at the time of the boys' birth.

Scott Wentworth gives a strong performance as Henry IV. One senses his guilt and his desperate desire to do good and to bring peace to his beleaguered nation. He is a regal king, who is very much concerned with the idea of ensuring the survival of his line.

Falstaff (James Blendick) in this production is both a comic and tragedian. He is not the out and out ribald Falstaff that we usually get, which may not be what Monette had in mind, when he spoke of creating something funny and vivid. But, what Blendick gave us is, in a sense, Falstaff's real nature, a man who has fallen on hard times through too much drink, too much food, and a lifestyle supported by thievery rather than honorable battling as befits a soldier, even an old one. He thinks little of honor. Blendick delivers the soliloquy about of what Falstaff thinks about honor at the end of Act V, Scene I with a kind of weary pathos that befits this Falstaff. I think Shakespeare meant to tell us something here to which in the past we have failed to pay much attention with the result that we have learned little about 'honor' and its heavy implications that often lead to damnable action we cannot, in all honesty, defend.

Historically, Shakespeare called the character Sir John Oldcastle, who happened to be a leader of the Lollards, who fought for Henry IV, and became a close friend of Hal's in real life. And just as Hal, once he becomes Henry V, eventually turns his back on Falstaff, so the real Henry V eventually sentenced his old friend Oldcastle to death for adhering to a heretical belief. The Lollards, by the way, are responsible for the first translation of the Bible into English, published as early as 1388.

Shakespeare, at the strong urging of Queen Elizabeth, changed the name to Falstaff to protect the feelings of the Oldcastle descendants. This turned out to be a disguised form of the name of Sir John Fastolfe (1378?-1459), another Lollard. Fastolfe, also a soldier, happened to own Cairn Castle in Norfolk, and an inn called the Boar's Head at Southwark. Shakespeare, of course, places his Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap, a London suburb.

While neither the real Fastolfe nor Oldcastle in anyway resembled the rascally Falstaff, Shakespeare borrowed enough from each to create the character, who has delighted and fascinated audiences for centuries. Blendick managed to bring a new dimension to Falstaff's character that one has not seen before, but that seems very much in place.

Hal, of course, was an irresponsible youth, but one who had very much an idea of where he wanted to go when the time comes. He may have rebelled against his father, but when called on to serve him, he served him well and learned much about kingship. The role needs a strong actor, who can show us the transformation that must take place from reckless youth to responsible prince. Unfortunately, David Snelgrove has not yet achieved the depth of understanding of this character to play him with conviction. When he faces the audience at the end of Act I, Scene 2, we are not convinced by what he reveals about the nature of Hal's current idle life and his future plans. Nor is he a strong enough actor to offer a counterweight to Blendick's Falstaff and, therefore, often lets him down in a theatrical sense.

The final character, who must be spot on to make this play work is Hotspur. As his name implies, he is a character of a rather intemperate nature, who acts without much thought. He is someone very much concerned with honor and chivalry, and so is inclined toward risking everything for a cause, whether justified or not. While Hal turns out to be a leader of men, Hotspur — who wants to be one desperately — is not. Shakespeare gave him lines that can easily be twisted into moments of comedy, even if not meant to be, because they speak of the character's overexcited nature. Again, one needs someone who can bring this out. But, Monette chose a young actor for this production, Adam O'Byrne, who cannot yet live up to the requirements. Of course, the director, in wanting to stress the sense of fun and vividness of his production, encouraged the young actor to amplify the vehemence in Hotspur's nature, turning everything he said into a kind of machine gun-fired stream of jocular humor. The end result of this fast and furious explosion of words brought about a swallowing of the text, a mumble which could not be understood much of the time.

The costumes and set by Dana Osborne, though not keeping strictly to the period, nevertheless, captures it in a really wonderful way. The only time one feels she failed was in the interpretation of Owen Glendower's costume (Raymond O'Neill), which made him look like someone more at home in The Lord of The Rings than in Henry IV.

Whatever reservations one has about this productions, they are not enough to spoil one's enjoyment of this Shakespeare play, which in its time and for a couple of centuries onward, proved to be one of the most popular of his plays. Only in the late 19th century did Henry IV, Part 1 fall out of favor with directors, some actually claiming it is unproducable. One cannot disagree more. It is eminently producable and makes fine theatre. So, do go and see it.