Review: The Lion in Winter by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs

Our medieval experience for Austin Playhouse's The Lion in Winter was unexpectedly complete, for last week in that almost unheated temporary tent structure on the windy plains of the Mueller Development we were wishing we had castle-appropriate fur and wool like those of the period costumes put together for the actors by Diana Huckaby. I suspect that they might have been wearing high tech underwear for the long evening during which we sat motionless watching them.

The talkative lady from Chicago who settled next to us at the Sunday performance confided that she was there because high winds had prompted Austin Playhouse to cancel the Saturday staging.  She went over to greet Artistic Director Don Toner as he was wrangling a space heater.  The temperature fell during the first half of this two-act work, and she and her husband disappeared at the intermission, as did a number of other attendees.

That was the down side, but be of good cheer.  The Playhouse put in industrial heaters for this weekend, and friends just confirmed to us that they were toasty warm.

The Lion in Winter, staged originally in New York in 1966, is a familiar title thanks largely to the 1968 film of the same name with Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn. It won playwright Goldman an Academy Award for his adaptation of the script.  It's the year 1168, as the Queen reminds us in a memorably acerbic line, "and of course everyone is carrying knives."

Vaguely based in English history, this piece has few of the complexities of Shakespeare's histories and none of the pageantry.  King Henry married well, taking Eleanor and her Aquitaine, consolidating a reign of extent unmatched since the days of Charlemagne almost four centuries earlier. The royal pair had five sons. The first died as an infant and the heir apparent, Henry's namesake, died only months before the opening scene.  Now at the ripe old age of 50 -- ancient for the epoch -- Henry is canoodling with his 16-year-old female ward, he has kept his queen under house arrest in another palace for ten years, and he is grappling with the problem of preparing for his succession.

The trouble is that he doesn't like at all the choices available to him. Henry's sons are the Freudian split attributions of himself.  Richard the warrior is all ego, brash and insistent; youngest son John is the pampered, pathetic id-baby; and between them is superego Geoffrey, the cynical schemer, alliance-maker and negotiator.

In short, it's a family drama with a cast of only seven, including one outsider, the young visiting French king. The Lion in Winter is a sort of Dallas set in the 12th-century palace of Chinon.  Both kings, Henry and Philip, want to wed nubile Alais. Queen Eleanor wants the throne for any one of her sons, but most of all, she says, she wants her King Henry back.

Plots, challenges, ruses and betrayals abound, all of them entertaining.  Plaintive young Alais is the only non-conspirator, the epitome of female dependence.  After all, these are the middle ages.

James Goldman's dialogue is chewy and satisfyingly confrontational.  Talk about tough love!  The core conflict is between Huck Huckaby as Henry and Babs George as his sequestered queen, Eleanor.  In this production it's an uneven contest, for Huckaby's the equivalent of a barbershop tenor, with George the equivalent of a serene, decided Valkyrie.  I quickly note that my wife disagrees; she found both the characters and the actors evenly matched.  The royal spouses go at it hard, with the long, practised knowledge of one another's vulnerabilities, as in many a long enduring difficult marriage.  Goldman's dialogue for them is as sharp as dual combat, alternating between broadswords and the rapier and dagger.

Director Don Toner doesn't otherwise surprise us, choosing his cast safely and securely from the Playhouse company.  We know that Brock England is not a spoiled idiot and Ben Wolfe is not a brute, but they aptly mimic those stereotypes.  Jason Newman, on the other hand, shows his creepy side as the malicious and intellectually treacherous Geoffrey, a role of greater depth than those he has handled recently at the Playhouse and at Austin Shakespeare.

Dan Kerrigan as visiting King Philip of France is appropriately callow and challenging.  Ingénue Kimberly Barrow does as best she can as the pet of the royals, even though director Toner consistently situates her so that she's obliged to turn and speak upstage, half hiding her face from the audience.

You could just rent the DVD or dig it out of your collection, but Austin Playhouse is offering you a fine cast, an unusual venue, and action that should strike enough spark and fire to keep you fascinated.  The Lion in Winter posits that all unhappy families are unique and reminds us that wars can be fought on the battlefields of the heart.

Review by Cate Blouke at the Statesman's Austin360 Seeing Things blog, November 23

Review by Jillian Owens for the Austin Chronicle, December 1

EXTRAS

Click to go to KUT.org to listen to Michael Lee's Arts Eclectic piece on this production (2 min.)

Click to view Austin Playhouse program for The Lion in Winter

Hits as of 2015 03 01: 2624

The Lion in Winter
by James Goldman
Austin Playhouse