'Henry V': Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival gives full measure

CENTER VALLEY, Pa. - The big Shakespeare pilgrimage of the summer would seem to be to the Druid Theatre Company's marathon performances of Shakespeare's "second tetralogy," a saga of English monarchs and wars from Richard II to Henry V imported from Ireland to the Lincoln Center Festival.

Yet there's an equal impetus to travel the opposite direction, from Philadelphia to DeSales University in Center Valley, where the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival offers Henry V through Sunday: How often is the same play such a thoroughly different experience?

Tight, tough Druid-style Shakespeare, with a sweeping sense of continuity over the four plays might seem hard to beat. But Druid's Henry V was cut so much that one was grateful to have the more complete play at DeSales, served up in a more songful, expansive fashion, even if some of the actors were less seasoned.

The play's three-century-old theatrical conceit - that war is an institutionalized part of the landscape and that Henry has a noble right to conquer France - isn't so easily swallowed in the 21st century, where war is so pervasive.

Maybe that's why director Matt Pfeiffer kept the climactic battle of Agincourt stripped down to no more than what the script requires - with special attention given to the more mercenary moments. The chorus (narrator) was positioned face-forward to the audience, strongly contextualizing the play as history hailing from a different climate of patriotism - thanks to the finely tuned performance by Greg Wood.

In his evolution from dissolute frat-house prince to responsible king, Zack Robidas delivered the St. Crispin's Day speech in ways that underscored how much the forthcoming battle was a preferable alternative to mundane life at home. And although he sometimes fell back on broad strokes and mildly clichéd line readings in other scenes, Robidas was such a vivid presence that he truly took the audience with him in his personal and kingly evolution.

Yet the play was certainly not defanged: The Bob Phillips set, with rough, plain planks doubling as doors, allowed multiple characters to make dramatic simultaneous entrances, like armies coming out of the woodwork.

If anything made you suspend your disbelief, it's that Pfeiffer made Henry V hang together. Typically, references to the play's prequel with the character of Falstaff (discussed but not seen) and later, the post-victory courtship between Henry and the French Princess Katherine, can seem shoehorned into the larger war story. But here, scenes were elided cleverly, often with short songs by Alex Beachtel that hit just the right emotional temperature. The comic awkwardness in the courtship grew naturally out of the lines, with Robidas in charmingly unbuttoned form.

Other comic scenes were marred by so much yelling you couldn't hear the language. Maybe the idea was to drown out the candy wrappers, crinkling water bottles, and conversation going on in the audience. Makes sense.

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Repeated July 31, Aug. 1, and Aug. 2. Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival,

DeSales University, Center Valley, Pa. Tickets: $25-$63.

Information: 610-282-9455 or www.pashakespeare.org. EndText