Review: Henry V by Velvet Rut Theatre
by Michael Meigs

Punk rock and garage bands give way in Austin, Texas, to speakeasy Shakespeare.  The Austin Drama Club was chased by the City from its rental house on East 7th Street, set up out in the brushwood hills last summer with the scorpions, tried doing Julius Caesar at a biker bar in south Austin, and now appears to have found shelter in a ramshackle former supermarket at William Cannon and Westgate.

 

The Community Renaissance Market is an ad hoc sort of place, a collection of artisans, coffee sellers, artists of varying levels of accomplishment, and purveyors of bric-a-brac.  Japhy Fernandes and associates have secured the use of a great wide empty hallway in the westward remotes of the complex, hung it with curtains and tall posters, set up a sort of a stage and some ranks of folding chairs and turned it into a theatre space.  In the evening they have the complex practically to themselves.  When you walk in the front door at about 7:40 in the evening the custodian turns an incurious eye to you, asks, "Here for the play?" and sends you through the empty coffee bar to the table where Sabrina Tarbutton in her bright princess ball gown (as Katherine the 'Dolphine,' princess of France) welcomes you and collects your $8 donation.

 

While you settle in waiting for the action to begin you can listen to some Tom Waits and Lou Reed.  In fact, tech operator Ellen Fernandes keeps a soundtrack running behind you during much of the performance, with a lot of moody bar music.  Early in the evening the players were emoting over the throaty roar of the heating system, but that unwelcome accompaniment eventually went away.

 

What to make of the ADC?  They are hard core, for sure.  Not in the "XXX adult" sense of the term, but in their dedication to the drama and specifically to Shakespeare.  Nothing daunted by their logistical trials, the modest sizes of their audiences or the inattention of the press, over the rest of this calendar year they are doing ten by William S. and one by Oscar Wilde -- not cheery Earnest but instead the lurid Salomé.  This is their fourth production of Henry V, so they certainly merit their "repertoiry" label.

 

They tailor William's scripts to run fast and sometimes loose.  Henry V takes about 90 minutes, but that includes two ten-minute intermissions, so you're still fresh when Japhy and Sabrina wind up the action with a clinging hootchie-kootchie dance.  Pretty much all the good bits are still there, though.  They do it with eleven players for twenty-plus roles, of which Steven Brandt handles about a third.  Brandt appears as the chorus, the bishop, the king of France, wicked Lord Scroop, the surrendering  governor of Harfleur "and various sundry others."

 

Vocal style is all over the place.  Fernandes as King Henry is emphatic and strong, often menacing -- he takes advantage of proximity with the audience to lower his voice to a serpent's hiss into the ear of the kneeling traitor Lord Scroop.  Brandt in his many personae speaks quickly, often without particular attention to the scansion.

 

It helps to know the play already -- as for example, in the truncated scene in French between the "Dolphine" and her serving woman Alice, where Tarbutton delivers mostly imaginary French while Hannah Haide gets her lines crisply correct.

 

Christopher Roberts as tough guy Nim holds his own with a measured, apparently authentic British accent while wiry Christopher Harris bounces and weaves as bad Bardolph.  Casey Allen as Pistol is piratical and equally hopped up.  You'd hate to run across this trio in a dark parking lot, unless perhaps you were looking to score something illicit and you were carrying a weapon yourself.

 

No, this is not elegance, but that's intentional and emphatic.  The Austin Drama Club -- again using their earlier "Velvet Rut" monicker -- is just about the closest you'll come to the ancient tradition of the wandering troupe.  Rascals and ruffians, those intent and penniless players brought Shakespeare right down to the masses, setting up in a town square or a back hall to wave wooden swords, bounce around on imaginary horses and enact histories, tragedies and comedies.  They flung Shakespeare's words into the air as curses, exclamations and incantations, amazing their audiences.

 

I like to think that Shakespeare as a hard-working actor and playwright would be entirely at home with the Austin Drama Club.  He might object to  abridgements of his text and he would be intrigued by the speakeasy atmosphere. But he would see actors and audiences hard at work, breathing life into his pages.

 

EXTRA

Click to view program leaflet for Henry V by the Austin Drama Club

 

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Henry V
by William Shakespeeare
Velvet Rut Theatre