Review by anonymous
June 21, 2017What I liked
I like the subject matter. The Katharine Parr story was welcome and well-told. The Anne of Cleves LOOKED LIKE the Holbein portrait! And Hilary Elman’s Aragon queen was rivetting and excellent. Anne Boleyn was terrific too; it just would’ve been nice, in her case and others, if the actress made some choices that belied and enhanced the basic thrust of their texts. Where was Boleyn’s vulnerability, Seymour’s truculence, Howard’s true steam? If not in the writing, bring it
anyway—-so that we have all 6 as three-dimensional women.
What I didn't like
Cast a bigger, scarier, sexier, more passionate, and paradoxically more conflicted actor as the King. With this one, there was no
contest.
More free rein with the costumes. They need not all be true-to-period: it’s the Afterlife. Ditto with lighting and music: it’s the afterlife. Not reality. Get jiggy with it.
My overall impression
Worthwhile and fun, especially for a fan of the wives’ stories. Not much new here to chew on, but it’s all accurate in ways that “The Tudors” decidedly was not, and the actresses are justly cast physically, and the author’s choice to lead up finally to the first wife, Catherine of Aragon, really pays off. Not only is her role the best written and the author’s take on how her success as Regent impacted Henry the most original of the play’s points, but the actress Hilary Elman knocks it out of Hampton Court with her sweetness, her indomitable fire, her devotion, purity, her well-deserved self-righteousness, her perfectly restrained “foreign” accent, and her tragic stature. The other actresses all have something to recommend them. Boleyn is a shade too on-the-nose with her defiant nature (though it’s right), and it’s hard to believe this virago in the sections where she talks of the passion she came to have for him, the Howard’s fine but she could’ve delved deeper for some genuinely un-P.C. girl-doll sensuality, the Seymour has the least interesting role and the actress (not unlike the Boleyn) doesn’t find any extra nuance that might flesh out the limits in the writing. In short, the writing and acting of the women are all fine, but only Elman takes her character to the next level. Which brings us to Henry. Unfortunately, the author has undermined his play and even his thesis by casting himself as the King. More butterball than behemoth or (as he was in his youth), beefcake, this spluttering, already defeated Henry doesn’t provide the Ur-masculine balance the play needs in order to fully earn its pro-wives perspective. Not sure what it would be like with a really dangerous actor as Henry. But it would be better.
