William Sturdivant and Tyler Michaels King in “Richard II” at the Guthrie Theater. (Photo by Dan Norman)
It may be a bit harder to find these days, in a post-pandemic-reopening entertainment economy where tentpole productions often reign supreme, but Theatre with a capital T is still out there. And that includes Shakespeare with a capital S: Chicago Shakespeare Theater just wrapped up a critically acclaimed production of Richard III, while the Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C. is preparing to welcome an immersive Macbeth and San Diego’s Old Globe plans to stage all four Henry VI plays as a two-part event this summer.
Another historically ambitious multi-part Shakespeare project is taking shape at the Guthrie Theater. The storied Minneapolis institution is currently performing the Bard’s epic trilogy, Richard II, Henry IV (its parts 1 and 2 have been condensed into a single evening), and Henry V, in rotating repertory. A company of 25 actors is bringing the story to life, swapping characters and costumes depending on the show and night.
In development for years, the project’s scope first turned heads when it was announced pre-pandemic in 2020. But considering the challenges that theaters now face in 2024, the endeavor has reached a new level of dramatic novelty.
“In this moment, with some retraction in the field—and the Guthrie is not outside of those challenges—I felt it was important that we as an organization plant a flag here,” said Guthrie artistic director Joseph Haj, who is helming the plays. “We wanted to show that we’re still very much capable of work of scale, of ambition and of intelligence.”
A bit like Game of Thrones, Shakespeare’s Henriad, as the four plays are often dubbed, explores the power and cost of seizing and wearing the British crown over the course of 22 epic years. Audiences watch a king become a man, a man become a king, and the king become a hero.
The Guthrie has embraced the saga’s heroic scale at every turn. The costume matrix alone resembles something closer to a blockbuster musical, with almost 200 pieces. The stage, which morphs into a distinct look for each play, is packed with steel staircases, lifts, and not one but two turntables. In addition to the 25 cast members, 12 understudies dutifully stand by, ready to cover a dizzying array of tracks. Then there’s the script itself, which, while cut and trimmed, still comes in at more than 300 pages.
It’s a sizable undertaking, one designed to test and challenge the entire Guthrie operation.
“It’s crucial for organizations to find these moments periodically where we do the thing that we are not certain that we know how to do,” Haj told the cast and production team on the first day of rehearsal. “We must do the thing that tests us absolutely. It’s why we climb mountains. It’s why we run marathons. To find out where our limits reside.”
A Return to Repertory
Helping guide the current team through this theatrical triathlon is the Guthrie’s own history, which has shown that it indeed knows how to do this. Founded in 1963 by English director Sir Tyrone Guthrie, the theatre bearing his name began as a repertory theatre, presenting plays in rotation with a resident company for decades. In 1990, the acting company, under Garland Wright and Charles Newell’s direction, staged the Henriad to much acclaim.
Haj remembers those plays fondly, as he was a member of the acting company then.
“The entire experience lives so richly in my being and in my memory,” Haj said in an interview. “I remember those marathon days where we played all of the plays on the same day, and how rich of an artistic experience that was, how defining that was for me as a young artist.”
Ghosts from the 1990 production still greet Guthrie audiences to this day. The trio of shows was so deeply revered that when it came time to open the theatre’s new building in 2006, production images from the trilogy were subtly woven into the walls, literally with a special threading process. Attentive visitors will spot King Richard contemplating life near guest services, Henry Bolingbroke freshly crowned outside the thrust stage, and Harry Percy and Haj sword-fighting above the building’s four-story escalator.
But ghosts from the past don’t necessarily ensure victory on this new campaign. Instead, the Guthrie is relying on a much more tangible secret weapon: time. Time in development. And time in the rehearsal room.
Haj first reached out to the Guthrie’s resident dramaturg, Carla Steen, to begin whittling down the script more than five years ago. Together they weighed which characters would get the boot, which speeches would stay, and, above all, how to best preserve the forward momentum of a nine-hour stage epic.
Along the way they staged two workshops and considered an array of artistic possibilities. There were also a lot of math problems: How quickly could one actor change costumes? How soon could the audience accept a featured actor returning in a different role? And how could they ensure that each performer receives ample breaks throughout the show?
“We needed a framework to even begin to understand how to begin to populate the plays,” Steen said. “The math had to be done in order to enable the artistic input.”
Steen and the Guthrie’s resident casting director, Jen Liestman, relied on stopwatches and Excel spreadsheets to develop the final casting matrix. They ultimately landed on a company of 21 actors in about 100 roles (four extras are also featured).
Woven into the acting tracks are deliberate easter eggs: The actor who plays Richard II, a king removed from power, also plays Lord Mortimer in Henry IV, a rebel who fights the current king. Such calculated casting choices are there for the audience to revel in, though if they don’t catch them that’s also fine.
“This journey was mathematical but it was also artistic—we really had to think about those things in concert,” Liestman said.
In Service of the Story
The Guthrie welcomed their acting company in January. After years of development, it was now the job of living, breathing performers to bring the plays to life.
“This is truly a test unlike any other for an actor,” said Jasmine Bracey, a member of the company whose acting track includes Duchess of York, Worcester, Montjoy, and Alice. “Will your voice hold up? Will you say the right line? Will you even know if you’re in the right play?”
Instead of the typical five-week rehearsal schedule, the cast was granted nine weeks together before their first preview in March—still a lean timetable considering the breadth of work that needed to be done. Haj set a blistering pace from the start, staging Richard II in just four days.
To achieve their task on time (and to do it well), Bracey said the company left their egos at the door, focusing only on the story in front of them.
“Every single beat, every single moment, we know that our job is to serve the story,” Bracey said. “Sometimes you’ll work in a room where people are serving their own concept, But in this space, we are all making choices to serve the Bard’s story. It’s been just extraordinary.”
Fueling the company through each line—and there are a lot of them—is a powerful, complicated tale. Shakespeare uses his trio of kings to tackle big themes: ambition, pride, leadership, and the terrible cost of war. On top of the running time and logistics, it’s a big but gratifying load to carry.
“It’s the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done, and it’s also as good a time as I’ve ever had in a rehearsal room,” Haj said. “All of the demands of these very hard plays are satisfying because the plays are just genuinely, legitimately great.”
Does every audience member need to sign up for the whole ride? Each play has been produced to stand on its own, with unique conflicts, characters, and themes, so that patrons can sample the shows however they wish: individually, collectively, in or out of order. For diehards, the Guthrie is offering two marathon Saturdays at which audiences will be treated to the complete narrative arc in a single day: You can catch Richard II at 10 a.m., have lunch, sit with Henry IV at 3 p.m., and then, after dinner, end your day with Henry V’s war with the French, starting at at 8:30 p.m. Indeed the opening day, April 13, is one of those marathon days.
“The joy of being able to set some things up early, in Richard II, then pull the thread on late in Henry V—that is super, super exciting,” Haj said. “That long-form storytelling…if we think in contemporary life of The Godfather, The Crown, or Succession—all of those modern iterations were built on the architecture of these history plays.”
Haj believes the entire experience will go down as a once-in-a-generation endeavor for staff, artists, and audiences alike.
“You might get one or two of these sorts of things in your entire career,” Haj said. “I think that’s feeling to many of us like a real gift.”
Abraham Swee (he/him) is a Minneapolis-based freelance journalist. He covers topics ranging from travel and theatre to sustainability and animal conservation.
