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Today it is below 80 degrees! There is a breeze! The birds are singing! (No, really, I am next to an open window and birds are singing outside, though I can also hear traffic noises cos, y'know, city.) The weather is GLORIOUS, is what I'm saying here. And White Collar is back! I am often terrible about posting White Collar reactions, and then I get irritated with my past self because sometimes I like to reread reaction posts to remind myself what's going on in the show; but I'm sorry, future self, I'm not posting any White Collar reactions today either, though it does remain the show of my heart, oh gosh I just love it so much.
Instead, today I am posting about The Hollow Crown!
Before I say anything else I should note that I am so very much not an expert on these plays. I've read Richard II and Henry IV (part one only) a total of once each, and never read Henry V; I've seen one previous production of Henry IV, cut dramatically to fit both parts into three hours, and two previous productions of Henry V. So I come to this armed with shaky knowledge of the text, though also with lots of Hal feelings that predate my Hiddleston feelings by some years. Okay! That's covered, time for some SHAKESPEARE FEELINGS.
I -- wow, I really, really loved Richard II. I suspect in large part I loved it uncritically because I had the least prior investment in it, so my thoughts can basically be summed up with "Ben Whishaw: the Gaius Baltar England deserves" and "oh my god this production is SO BEAUTIFUL" and "wow, Richard and Bolingbroke are the most tragic of ex-boyfriends." Yep. It was beautiful and tragic and Whishaw was amaaaazing, and their Bolingbroke was pretty phenomenal too; I'm not sure I believe he grew up to be Jeremy Irons, but I enjoyed both their Henrys a lot.
Henry IV was the play I enjoyed least, which is a shame, because I have a lot of innate fondness for it and am really willing to be entertained by it. This production just had a couple of fundamental problems, the worst of which was that it wasn't funny. This is bizarre! The play is HILARIOUS. But I wasn't laughing that much at Hal and Falstaff, and I wasn't laughing at Hotspur (nor at Kate, and the first scene with the Percys could be GOLD) and ... why would you sap the joy from it? Not allowing the production to be funny also created a host of other problems; for one thing, the director still seemed really interested in every scene with Falstaff, but sans humor both parts but especially the second just dragged. For another, Falstaff and Hal really didn't seem fond of each other, and that not only makes everything they do kind of uncomfortable to watch, but if Hal doesn't care about Falstaff then we're less likely to care about Falstaff, and also it makes Hal come off as a massive bag of dicks. Which. Okay, you can totally make Hal a massive bag of dicks, but Hiddleston spends most of Henry V being this perfect mix of calculating and sincerely charming, and that is exactly how I want my Prince Hal, so I'm inclined to side-eye the Henry IV director on that one.
This is not to say that there weren't bits of Henry IV that I really enjoyed! Doll Tearsheet was one; she absolutely stole the show. I enjoyed every scene that she was in, and could probably have cheerfully slogged through a lot more of the Falstaff stuff if she'd been there making faces in the background. Another was every scene with King Henry and Hal; I'm fairly sure I'd be happy to just watch Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston act at one another for hours. And obviously I'd be remiss if I didn't mention That Scene, the one everyone on tumblr has been making endless gifs of, with Hal and Poins at the bathhouse together. I think some stuff happened in that scene? I have no idea, I was too busy making fic notes in my head re: Hiddleston's mostly-naked body, as one does. A+ directing choice!
And now we'll talk about Henry V, wherein my incandescent joy can't really be rendered. Which is not to say it was perfect; though it suffered much less than Henry IV for having the comedy subplot cut (making room for more full soliloquies, I suspect) I did still miss the stuff with Fluellen. And there was one cut that veered beyond bizarre into a bit disturbing: because they made the Boy be the Chorus at the end, they cut the line about French mercenaries having slaughtered all the boys in the company, but ... they didn't cut Henry ordering all the prisoners killed. So -- what, you ordered the prisoners killed because York was killed, then? Oookay, King Loki, that was kind of an overreaction.
That said, I adored basically everything else. The speeches were perfect; by the end of "Once more unto the breach" I was fucking well ready to storm some French castles, and by the end of the St. Crispin's Day speech I was a bit teary, and dfjhfdjdsf. I really believed everyone would follow Harry into Hell if he asked them. Other things I enjoyed include but are not limited to how gorgeous everything was (though still not as stupidly gorgeous as everything in Richard II), and how though they cut the Fluellen comedy they kept in the comedy of Kate and Alice practicing English, and Unexpected Paterson Joseph eyefucking his way through his role as York, and how occasionally Henry would get a bit alarmingly threatening and I would squirm a lot because I have certain Pavlovian Hiddleston responses at this point.
I'd also like to specifically talk about the wooing scene, because I automatically braced myself for it; there's no way to tell how horribly skeevy it's going to be. Of the two productions I'd previously seen, one played the wooing scene as an entirely political affair, one Henry and Kate have to painfully suffer through because it's expected of them, which I suppose is honest but was awful to watch; the other played it with Katherine knowing exactly what she was getting into, liking what she saw, and being increasingly amused with Hal's entirely hapless and earnest wooing. Obviously I like door number two much better! But wow did I like this one. This Hal knew exactly what he was doing, and it's impossible to tell exactly where the calculation ends and the honest awkwardness begins, but he really really wanted Kate to be okay with it; and meanwhile she was also awkward but willing to give liking this guy a try, and you can fucking see him win her over at "the poor/and untempering effect of my visage" because TOM HIDDLESTON ARE YOU APOLOGIZING FOR YOUR FACE, of course she is completely charmed by it! So that is a scene I unexpectedly want to watch a million times because it fills me with fuzzy joy.
And those are my Hollow Crown thoughts! Henry V is probably the only one I'll get any wear out of rewatching, but I suspect I will rewatch it a lot.
Instead, today I am posting about The Hollow Crown!
Before I say anything else I should note that I am so very much not an expert on these plays. I've read Richard II and Henry IV (part one only) a total of once each, and never read Henry V; I've seen one previous production of Henry IV, cut dramatically to fit both parts into three hours, and two previous productions of Henry V. So I come to this armed with shaky knowledge of the text, though also with lots of Hal feelings that predate my Hiddleston feelings by some years. Okay! That's covered, time for some SHAKESPEARE FEELINGS.
I -- wow, I really, really loved Richard II. I suspect in large part I loved it uncritically because I had the least prior investment in it, so my thoughts can basically be summed up with "Ben Whishaw: the Gaius Baltar England deserves" and "oh my god this production is SO BEAUTIFUL" and "wow, Richard and Bolingbroke are the most tragic of ex-boyfriends." Yep. It was beautiful and tragic and Whishaw was amaaaazing, and their Bolingbroke was pretty phenomenal too; I'm not sure I believe he grew up to be Jeremy Irons, but I enjoyed both their Henrys a lot.
Henry IV was the play I enjoyed least, which is a shame, because I have a lot of innate fondness for it and am really willing to be entertained by it. This production just had a couple of fundamental problems, the worst of which was that it wasn't funny. This is bizarre! The play is HILARIOUS. But I wasn't laughing that much at Hal and Falstaff, and I wasn't laughing at Hotspur (nor at Kate, and the first scene with the Percys could be GOLD) and ... why would you sap the joy from it? Not allowing the production to be funny also created a host of other problems; for one thing, the director still seemed really interested in every scene with Falstaff, but sans humor both parts but especially the second just dragged. For another, Falstaff and Hal really didn't seem fond of each other, and that not only makes everything they do kind of uncomfortable to watch, but if Hal doesn't care about Falstaff then we're less likely to care about Falstaff, and also it makes Hal come off as a massive bag of dicks. Which. Okay, you can totally make Hal a massive bag of dicks, but Hiddleston spends most of Henry V being this perfect mix of calculating and sincerely charming, and that is exactly how I want my Prince Hal, so I'm inclined to side-eye the Henry IV director on that one.
This is not to say that there weren't bits of Henry IV that I really enjoyed! Doll Tearsheet was one; she absolutely stole the show. I enjoyed every scene that she was in, and could probably have cheerfully slogged through a lot more of the Falstaff stuff if she'd been there making faces in the background. Another was every scene with King Henry and Hal; I'm fairly sure I'd be happy to just watch Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston act at one another for hours. And obviously I'd be remiss if I didn't mention That Scene, the one everyone on tumblr has been making endless gifs of, with Hal and Poins at the bathhouse together. I think some stuff happened in that scene? I have no idea, I was too busy making fic notes in my head re: Hiddleston's mostly-naked body, as one does. A+ directing choice!
And now we'll talk about Henry V, wherein my incandescent joy can't really be rendered. Which is not to say it was perfect; though it suffered much less than Henry IV for having the comedy subplot cut (making room for more full soliloquies, I suspect) I did still miss the stuff with Fluellen. And there was one cut that veered beyond bizarre into a bit disturbing: because they made the Boy be the Chorus at the end, they cut the line about French mercenaries having slaughtered all the boys in the company, but ... they didn't cut Henry ordering all the prisoners killed. So -- what, you ordered the prisoners killed because York was killed, then? Oookay, King Loki, that was kind of an overreaction.
That said, I adored basically everything else. The speeches were perfect; by the end of "Once more unto the breach" I was fucking well ready to storm some French castles, and by the end of the St. Crispin's Day speech I was a bit teary, and dfjhfdjdsf. I really believed everyone would follow Harry into Hell if he asked them. Other things I enjoyed include but are not limited to how gorgeous everything was (though still not as stupidly gorgeous as everything in Richard II), and how though they cut the Fluellen comedy they kept in the comedy of Kate and Alice practicing English, and Unexpected Paterson Joseph eyefucking his way through his role as York, and how occasionally Henry would get a bit alarmingly threatening and I would squirm a lot because I have certain Pavlovian Hiddleston responses at this point.
I'd also like to specifically talk about the wooing scene, because I automatically braced myself for it; there's no way to tell how horribly skeevy it's going to be. Of the two productions I'd previously seen, one played the wooing scene as an entirely political affair, one Henry and Kate have to painfully suffer through because it's expected of them, which I suppose is honest but was awful to watch; the other played it with Katherine knowing exactly what she was getting into, liking what she saw, and being increasingly amused with Hal's entirely hapless and earnest wooing. Obviously I like door number two much better! But wow did I like this one. This Hal knew exactly what he was doing, and it's impossible to tell exactly where the calculation ends and the honest awkwardness begins, but he really really wanted Kate to be okay with it; and meanwhile she was also awkward but willing to give liking this guy a try, and you can fucking see him win her over at "the poor/and untempering effect of my visage" because TOM HIDDLESTON ARE YOU APOLOGIZING FOR YOUR FACE, of course she is completely charmed by it! So that is a scene I unexpectedly want to watch a million times because it fills me with fuzzy joy.
And those are my Hollow Crown thoughts! Henry V is probably the only one I'll get any wear out of rewatching, but I suspect I will rewatch it a lot.