Tag Archives: Damian Jermaine Thompson

NY CLASSICAL: HENRY IV

New York Classical Theatre’s Henry IV moves from Central Park to Carl Schurz Park and Castle Clinton this summer (photo © Sarah Antal)

HENRY IV
Through June 30: Central Park, Central Park West & 103rd St.
July 2-7: Carl Schurz Park, East 87th St. & East End Ave.
July 9-14, Castle Clinton, Battery Park
nyclassical.org

New York Classical Theatre is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary of presenting free Shakespeare in the parks and other public spaces throughout the city — along with works by Chekhov, Schiller, Shaw, Molière, and more — with another fun and fanciful frolic, a streamlined adaptation of the Bard’s Henry IV. The play, which falls between Richard II and Henry V in the Henriad, just finished its run in Central Park, where the action took place in seven locations around 103rd St. on the West Side, and next moves first to Carl Schurz Park, then to Castle Clinton in Battery Park.

Combining the two parts into one two-hour version, NYCT founding artistic director Stephen Burdman focuses on the relationship between Prince Hal (Ian Antal), who is the son of Henry IV (Nick Salamone), and the jovial bloviator Sir John Falstaff (John Michalski). The king’s reign is being threatened by a group of rebels led by Hotspur (Damian Jermaine Thompson), Northumberland (Juan Luis Acevedo), Countess Worcester (Carine Montbertrand), Countess Mortimer (Anique Clements), Lady Percy (Briana Gibson Reeves), and Welsh rebel Owen Glendower (Ian Gould). Supporting the king are Westmoreland (Gould), Sir Walter Blount (Nuah Ozryel), and, ostensibly, Prince Hal, aka Harry, who is spending all his time carousing with Falstaff and his merry band of drunken thieves: Poins (Anique Clements), Pistol (Ozryel), and Bardolph (Reeves), who hang around the Boar’s Head Tavern run by Mistress Quickly (Montbertrand).

Henry IV, formerly Henry Bolingbroke, usurped the throne from his cousin, Richard II, and now is in a face-off with Harry Percy, called Hotspur, who has defied the king’s orders by taking hostages following a war with the Scots and will only release them if the king pays a ransom to Glendower for Edmund Mortimer, Hotspur’s brother-in-law.

Meanwhile, the rotund braggart Falstaff conspires with Pistol and Bardolph to rob passing strangers, only to then be robbed themselves by the masked Hal and Poins, who have done so just to hear Falstaff regale them with a tale of how he had to fight off a hundred men with his skill and daring. Later, Falstaff embellishes his actions during the Battle of Shrewsbury, as Henry IV attempts to defend the realm against Hotspur and Glendower.

Sir John Falstaff (John Michalski) entertains the audience as well as Mistress Quickly (Montbertrand) and Prince Hal (Ian Antal) in NYCT’s Henry IV in Central Park (photo © Sarah Antal)

Burdman leads the audience through his trademark Panoramic Theatre, combining Environmental Theatre and Promenade Theatre as the crowd follows him and the actors to each new location, picking up passersby along the way as other parkgoers wonder what is going on. Part of the fun is watching this interaction between the actors, the grass and trees, the setting sun, and random strangers.

Production designer Kindall Almond keeps it simple; the period costumes are right on target, and there is no furniture and few props, primarily swords and Mistress Quickly’s utility belt of a bottle and cups. The performers are not mic’d, so the dialogue is front and center. The exchanges between the sly Prince Hal and the bawdy Falstaff lie at the heart of the play:

Prince Hal: Now, Harry, the complaints I hear of thee are grievous.
Falstaff: ’Sblood, my lord, they are false.
Prince Hal: Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne’er look on me. There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that father ruffian?
Falstaff: Whom means your grace?
Prince Hal: That villainous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff.
Falstaff: My lord, the man I know.
Prince Hal: I know thou dost.
Falstaff: But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old — the more the pity. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be fat be to be a sin, then many an old host is damned. No, my good lord, banish Pistol, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish plump Jack and banish all the world.
Prince Hal: I do, I will.

King Henry IV (Nick Salamone) fights off his enemies in swordfight in Central Park (photo © Sarah Antal)

The cast, a mix of NYCT veterans and first-timers, is solid up and down; six actors play two roles apiece, while three actors remain in one role: Salamone is a worthy King Henry IV, Antal makes a fine Prince Hal, but Michalski steals the show, as he should, as Falstaff, a meaty, mighty character made famous by Orson Welles in the 1965 film Chimes at Midnight. In his thirteenth NYCT show, Michalski, who has previously played Lady Bracknell, Prospero, Scrooge, and Sir Toby Belch for the troupe, immediately connects with the audience, making sure we never leave his (portly) side. His bellowing voice and unyielding demeanor are intoxicating, both hilarious and sad, as Falstaff stumbles across the hilly grass and embellishes his endless tales with a bold effrontery. “There lives not three good men unhanged in England and one of them is fat and grows old,” he declares.

Later, marching through the middle of the crowd, Michalski/Falstaff murmurs, “Where did all these people come from?” Burdman expects upwards of 7500 people to experience his superb adaptation this summer; you should do your best to be one of them.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THIS BITTER EARTH

Jesse (Damian Jermaine Thompson) and Neil (Tom Holcomb) face several crises in This Bitter Earth (photo by Mike Marques)

THIS BITTER EARTH
TheaterWorks Hartford online (and in person)
March 7-20, $20 virtual, $25 – $65 in person
twhartford.org

“This bitter earth / Well, what a fruit it bears / What good is love / Mmh, that no one shares? / And if my life is like the dust / Ooh, that hides the glow of a rose / What good am I? / Heaven only knows,” Dinah Washington sings in her 1960 number one hit, “This Bitter Earth.” The song plays at the end of TheaterWorks Hartford’s production of Harrison David Rivers’s This Bitter Earth, being performed onstage and streamed on demand through March 20.

The tender and moving, if earnest, play stars Damian Jermaine Thompson and Tom Holcomb as a mixed-race thirtyish couple facing different kinds of trauma in New York City and St. Paul, Minnesota, between March 2012 and December 2015. The serious Jesse Howard (Thompson) is a Black playwright with a burgeoning career; the more outgoing Neil Finley-Darden (Tom Holcomb) is a white Black Lives Matter activist from a wealthy family. While Neil feels grounded in his life and confident in his purpose, Jesse is much more on edge; in fact, he has a troubled relationship with gravity.

“Sometimes — and scientists may refute this, but fuck them — sometimes I can feel the Earth move. And not like tremors or earthquakes, tornados or hurricanes. This is not a matter of wind or tectonic plates but rather a matter of chemistry. Body chemistry. My body chemistry,” Jesse says in one of numerous short monologues he delivers directly to the audience. “I find it strange that others can’t feel it — the rotation. Strange and a bit lonely.”

The play takes place in their spacious Harlem bedroom, with large windows that often show snow falling, a coldness hovering over everything. (The attractive set is by Riw Rakkulchon.) “It’s the way that history isn’t history at all. Or, at least, the way that it doesn’t stay in the past. The way that the past fucks the present,” Neil tells us. The narrative goes back and forth in time, from when Jesse and Neil first meet and fall for each other, to the current day, amid several tragedies. Each flashback adds a bit more to the story, further developing the characters and certain key aspects of the story, which revolve around the murders of innocent Black men at the hands of white police officers and other citizens, from Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown to Jamar Clark and the Charleston church shooting.

Tom Holcomb and Damian Jermaine Thompson star as lovers who look at the world differently in TheaterWorks Hartford production (photo by Mike Marques)

But Rivers offers a neat twist on expectations, as Neil seems more intent on doing something about it than Jesse does. “You know, you accuse me of my white guilt, but what about yr apathy?” Neil declares as he prepares to take a van to a protest in Ferguson, Missouri. Jesse explains that he can’t go because he has rehearsals. “You know, yr not the center of the universe, Jesse. No one has that kind of gravitational pull. Not even you,” Neil says before leaving.

Their fights, which are no different from those of straight couples of the same race, often end in loving embraces, with clothes coming off as they roll around on the bed; their passion is evident throughout, even with their distractions. (There’s plenty for fight and intimacy director Rocío Mendez to do, as well as costume designer Devario D. Simmons.) But a common theme keeps arising, that of Jesse’s desire to live life like a regular person, whatever that is these days. “Yr a fucking double minority, Jesse,” Neil says, to which Jesse responds, “What does that have to do with anything?” Be sure to bring tissues for the conclusion.

Affectionately directed by David Mendizábal (Tell Hector I Miss Him, On the Grounds of Belonging) with almost too much thoughtful understanding, This Bitter Earth is a sensitive story of love in difficult times. The stream is well shot with multiple cameras in front of an audience, feeling like a theatrical work and not a film. The show, which premiered in 2017 at San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center, is even more cogent today, with the murders of Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many others occurring since the play’s debut. Rivers (Broadbend, Arkansas; When We Last Flew) has Jesse quote extensively from gay Black poet and activist Essex Hemphill, a hero of Jesse’s and, apparently, the playwright’s; the story works much better when Jesse speaks for himself.

Thompson (Fly, The Brother/Sister Plays) and Holcomb (London Assurance, Transport) have a sweet chemistry; you can’t help but root for Jesse and Neil through their hardships, trying to survive, as individuals and as a couple, in a world that needs to be seen as more than just black or white, straight or gay, male or female. As Washington sings, “Oh, this bitter earth / Yes, can it be so cold? / Today you’re young / Too soon you’re old / But while a voice / Within me cries / I’m sure someone / May answer my call / And this bitter earth, ooh / May not, oh, be so bitter after all.”