‘Tug of War: Foreign Fire’ Review

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The company of ‘Tug of War: Foreign Fire,’ adapted and directed by Barbara Gaines. Photo: Liz Lauren

By

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout
The Wall Street Journal
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May 25, 2016 4:56 p.m. ET

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It’s become common—even fashionable—to mount Shakespeare’s history plays in bulk. From Edward Hall’s “Rose Rage,” in which the three parts of “Henry VI” were packed into a single 5 1/2-hour span, to the four-night “Henriad” (“Richard II,” the two parts of “Henry IV” and “Henry V”) that the Royal Shakespeare Company recently brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music under the portmanteau title of “King and Country,” such festival-like productions have the signal advantage of supplying a wider context for each individual play. And while they require a not-inconsiderable investment of time—not to mention money—the current vogue of “binge-watching” consecutive episodes of arc-based cable-TV series like “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” has accustomed viewers to grappling with extended narratives over relatively short spans of time.

All of which bodes well for the success of “Tug of War,” in which Barbara Gaines, the artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is presenting six of the history plays in two installments. The first installment, “Foreign Fire,” consists of her own adaptations of “Edward III,” “Henry V” and the first part of “Henry VI,” all performed by a 19-actor ensemble in a single six-hour span that is interrupted by a 45-minute dinner break. (It will be followed in September by “Civil Strife,” which comprises the second and third parts of “Henry VI” and “Richard III.”) Sure enough, Ms. Gaines herself uses the word “binge-watching” to describe the effect of “Tug of War,” but to me it feels more like the theatrical equivalent of an exceptionally well-done Shakespearean TV miniseries, though a more pertinent comparison comes no less readily to mind. Boldly drawn, slashingly direct and as fast-moving as an arrow whizzing toward its target, “Foreign Fire” is everything that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s much-ballyhooed 2015 marathon stage version of “Wolf Hall” should have been—and wasn’t. It’s all-American Shakespeare in the best possible sense, at once unabashedly populist in style and unswervingly serious in artistic purpose.

Ms. Gaines has an ulterior motive: She has edited and directed “Tug of War” in such a way as to turn the history plays into an antiwar statement. If you cut your Shakespearean teeth on Laurence Olivier’s flag-waving 1944 film of “Henry V,” you’ll be surprised by the way in which she leaches the glory out of her combat scenes. Nary a sword is drawn all night long, and the emphasis goes squarely on what old-time warriors called the “butcher’s bill.” Even young Harry’s rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech (“For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother”) here acquires a dark tint of anguished introspection.

Yet “Foreign Fire” never stoops to can’t-we-all-just-get-along Pollyannism. Indeed, Ms. Gaines is true to Shakespeare in suggesting that war, hideous though it is, is also an enterprise to which well-meaning men are somehow irresistibly drawn, a tragedy we seem doomed to repeat—and repeat—in spite of ourselves, or because of ourselves. Nor is there anything rigidly conceptual about her staging or the décor. Scott Davis’s set, a three-story-tall metal scaffold and a mountain of rubber tires placed atop a floor of wooden planks, sounds a contemporary note, as does the first-rate four-piece rock band that furnishes the incidental music and accompanies such pointedly chosen songs as Leonard Cohen’s “There Is a War,” but Susan E. Mickey’s drab-colored costumes are nonspecifically Elizabethan in design. Two nicely ironic touches: The kings wear paper crowns, and the “throne” on which they sit is a gold-painted tire swing.

I haven’t mentioned the performances because it would take a second column to do them justice. Suffice it to say that Ms. Gaines has put together a cast adorned by some of Chicagoland’s most distinctive actors, among them Karen Aldridge, Kevin Gudahl and Larry Yando, who speaks in his inimitable rasp the last line of the evening, “Let’s all get even” (penned by Mr. Cohen, not Shakespeare). All move from role to role—Ms. Aldridge covers eight parts—with unflappable aplomb, changing characters as a mere mortal might change hats. The characterizations necessarily run to primary colors, just as the tightly edited, digression-shorn script sometimes shows signs of over-compression, but that’s a trivial price to pay for such abundant dramatic life.

One last thing: The program essays by Stuart Sherman, scholar-in-residence for “Tug of War,” will add greatly to your appreciation of the show. I was struck by his take on English history à la Shakespeare: “From an American perspective, it would be as though a present-day playwright were to track our history from Jamestown to World War II, focusing most intently on the span stretching from the Revolutionary through the Civil Wars.” That’s the way to write a program note.

—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, is the author of “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” which runs through June 12 at Palm Beach Dramaworks. Write to him at [email protected]