Shakespeare Gets Rizzy at BYU Young Company’s HENRY V

PROVO — Putting the “Young” in “Brigham Young”, the BYU Theatre Young Company is staging an engaging production of Henry V for children. The play was created to tour elementary schools, but can also be seen on campus at the West Campus Studio Theatre.

Shakespeare‘s 1599 play features a fictionalized version of the English leader’s unlikely victory against the French in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

Wednesday’s production included a wide variety of audience participation to engage tots. Cast members mingled with the audience before and after the show, and King Henry, played by Will Willis Isle, conscripted the audience to be part of the army of England.

During the production, the audience joined the cast giving battle cries, drumming on their laps like war drums, and throwing imaginary cannonballs at French castles. Audience members were also invited onstage to march around, and it was adorable seeing a girl no older than four onstage smiling and nodding along with the King’s speech.

Instead of actors wielding swords and shields, battles were staged with shadow puppets, a smart and space-friendly solution for a traveling production. Actors yelled “ching! ching!” as the puppets collided.

The set featured a white canopy tent and two triangular muslin structures that transformed between castle turrets and camp tents depending on the scene. Magnetic flags were placed on the tents with red English or blue French flags to help the audience know where scenes were happening. While effective on the main canopy, they did seem more hassle than they were worth on the other structures. One flag is probably enough.

Speaking of flags, while the shadow puppets were fun, inventive and space-conscious, the flags on them were quite small, which made it difficult to tell who was winning and losing.

The script, adapted by dramaturg Andrew Elijah Schindler, included a large amount of Gen Alpha slang spoken by the Chorus (played by Natalie Pierce). Words like rizz, beta, suss and mewing contest were applied liberally. For example, “To lay seize basically means yeeting stuff at buildings” and “There’s nothing more cringe than committing treason to the English crown”.

While adding language the audience will understand made sense, these lines did seem to lose their luster after a while. Many sentences seemed to follow a similar structure of cramming a buzzword in the middle and the end—and some phrases like “no cap” were repeated more than once. 

Victoria Crabtree as the French princess Katherine stood out among the cast with excellent movement and line delivery. She gave a confident performance and was entertaining, especially in the anatomical English lesson scene, obviously abbreviated from the raunchy original text.

The cast is generally lively and full of energy appropriate for the audience. Some cast members could benefit from slowing down their line delivery, and sinking their teeth into the text a bit.

Isle looked good in the titular role, with a kingly frame and a kind yet confident aura. His line delivery was effective, although he and director Rebeca Wallin could consider slowing down and mixing up the line delivery a bit more 

Wallin effectively moved actors around the stage and provided some good grouping of cast members. Lighting by production designer Kim Wright was generally supportive, although the full flood of red light that appeared in the middle of the St. Crispin’s Day speech was a bit much; if a gradual introduction of red light isn’t possible, it probably should just be avoided since it was pretty distracting.

Microphone quality had room for improvement. The sound level was too high, especially at the beginning of the show. The actors were projecting quite well for the small theater space, and the microphone levels simply made everything too loud. Mike quality also generally seemed like a large step down from the Main Stage theater in the same building, with frequent pops.

Overall, the production did an excellent job at audience participation that will keep young ones engaged. While its heavy reliance on Gen Alpha slang may get long in the tooth for mature audience members, BYU’s “Henry V” will provide a noble and well-intentioned introduction to Shakespeare’s most famous war play.