Henry VI: A Trilogy In Two Parts
Presented by NAATCO (National Asian American Theatre Company)
Written by William Shakespeare
Adapted and Directed by Stephen Brown-Fried
The Newman Theater at The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, in Manhattan
June 9, 2026 - July 19, 2026
Few theatrical undertakings require as much courage as mounting Shakespeare's Henry VI. The trilogy occupies an uneasy place in the canon: sprawling, crowded with nobles whose names blur together, written by a playwright still discovering the full extent of his powers, and so rarely produced that even devoted Shakespeareans often know it only by reputation. For generations it has inspired more academic defense than genuine affection. Yet the National Asian American Theatre Company's astonishing return to The Public Theater with Henry VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts, adapted and directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, performs what feels like a minor miracle. It does not merely rehabilitate these neglected histories; it reveals them as thrilling, psychologically rich, politically devastating works that seem to have been waiting centuries for precisely this production.
Brown-Fried's adaptation is an act of scholarship disguised as exhilarating theater. Compressing three plays into two evenings—roughly five and a half hours in total—might sound like an exercise in compromise, but it instead becomes an exercise in revelation. Rather than reducing Shakespeare's immense chronicle, Brown-Fried uncovers its essential architecture. What emerges is not a dutiful history lesson but a relentless saga of national collapse, charting the transformation of England from victorious empire to fractured state with astonishing clarity and mounting dramatic momentum. The result feels less like an abbreviated Shakespeare than a newly discovered masterpiece, one whose rhythms and emotional trajectory possess remarkable inevitability.
The evening begins with the funeral of Henry V, whose death leaves an infant son burdened with a crown impossibly larger than himself. From that moment onward, England seems fated toward disintegration. Foreign wars bleed into domestic rivalries, political compromise curdles into vengeance, and ambition becomes the governing principle of every institution. Oskar Eustis notes in the program that the trilogy feels startlingly contemporary, and Brown-Fried never forces those parallels. They arise naturally from Shakespeare's vision of leaders exploiting fear, populists inflaming grievance, institutions collapsing beneath personal ambition, and factions becoming incapable of imagining a common future. One need not strain to recognize echoes of the present. Shakespeare, remarkably, has already done the diagnosing.
What makes this production so extraordinary is that its political sweep never overwhelms its humanity. Brown-Fried continually redirects attention from historical pageantry to individual moral failure. Every betrayal registers as both strategic calculation and intimate wound. Every battlefield victory carries the unmistakable weight of personal catastrophe. The production understands that Shakespeare's histories are never really about crowns but about the corrosive effects of power upon ordinary human relationships—friendship, marriage, loyalty, parenthood, and faith. By the time civil war fully erupts in the second part, one has ceased thinking in terms of dynasties and instead mourns the slow destruction of an entire moral order.
The production's visual world is as bold as its dramaturgy. The collective dots provides a minimalist environment of remarkable expressive flexibility: movable wooden structures, rope-bound posts, exposed architecture, and a blood-red playing space littered with dark fragments suggesting ash, feathers, or the accumulated debris of history itself. The abstraction liberates the imagination rather than restricting it. Mextly Couzin's lighting transforms this stripped-down landscape into battlefields, throne rooms, prisons, and haunted memory, while Kate Marvin's muscular sound design supplies an ominous pulse that seems to rise from beneath England's fractured foundations.
Equally revelatory are the extraordinary costumes by the fashion collective threeASFOUR. They occupy an exhilarating space somewhere between medieval armor, Japanese martial tradition, haute couture, and speculative futurism. Structured silhouettes evoke fifteenth-century nobility without reproducing it literally, while exaggerated textures and sculptural forms communicate hierarchy, allegiance, and shifting fortunes with astonishing economy. The English initially inhabit a monochrome world of blacks and whites, the French emerge in luminous white, and gradually the crimson and white emblems of Lancaster and York bleed into every corner of the stage until costume itself becomes political argument. Rarely has wardrobe functioned so eloquently as visual storytelling.
The movement vocabulary devised by Orlando Pabotoy and Kimiye Corwin elevates the production even further. Their fight choreography rejects empty realism in favor of highly stylized theatrical ritual, employing bo staffs, curved blades, and precisely sculpted physical compositions that evoke both samurai cinema and classical tragedy. Battles unfold with breathtaking athleticism, yet never sacrifice narrative clarity. Deaths become strangely beautiful ceremonies. Decapitations are suggested through startling theatrical invention rather than graphic spectacle. The slain frequently rise and linger like restless spirits, haunting both victors and audience alike, transforming warfare into an ever-expanding accumulation of ghosts.
At the center stands Jon Norman Schneider's magnificent Henry VI, one of the most moving Shakespearean performances to appear in New York in recent memory. Schneider wisely refuses to compensate for Henry's passivity with artificial grandeur. Instead, he embraces the king's profound gentleness, intellectual seriousness, and almost monastic spirituality. His Henry is not weak because he lacks virtue but because he possesses too much of it for a political world governed by appetite. Watching Schneider chart the painful evolution from sheltered innocence to exhausted resignation becomes the emotional spine of the entire enterprise. Even amid scenes crowded with conspirators, he anchors the production through stillness alone.
Around him revolves an ensemble of astonishing distinction. Teresa Avia Lim's Margaret evolves from diplomatic bride into one of Shakespeare's most fearsome political operators, blazing with intelligence, fury, sensuality, and ruthless determination. Rajesh Bose gives the Duke of York immense charisma alongside terrifying ambition, making his rise and destruction equally compelling. Myka Cue transforms Joan la Pucelle into an electrifying warrior whose physical command nearly reclaims the play for France altogether. Julyana Soelistyo offers perhaps the production's greatest surprise: a mesmerizing Richard of Gloucester whose calculating stillness quietly announces the monster Shakespeare will later immortalize in Richard III. Mia Katigbak lends Gloucester extraordinary dignity and moral authority, Paul Juhn's Suffolk drips with elegant manipulation, Anna Ishida commands Warwick with classical assurance, Orville Mendoza ignites the stage as Jack Cade, David Shih delights as the swaggering Edward, and Đavid Lee Huỳnh brings striking complexity to the critical role of Charles the Dauphin and ardent valor to Young Clifford. Tommy Bo, Kimiye Corwin, John D. Haggerty, Sue Jin Song and James Yaegashi complete this superb cast. That sixteen actors repeatedly transform into dozens of vividly distinct personalities never ceases to astonish.
Perhaps the production's greatest achievement lies in its treatment of Shakespeare's language. Brown-Fried trusts the verse completely. Nothing is apologized for, modernized into banality, or rushed past. Instead, every actor inhabits the poetry as living thought. The text regains its muscularity, wit, philosophical depth, and startling humor. Even notoriously difficult genealogical arguments become dramatically engaging because they emerge from characters whose desires remain crystal clear. The production demonstrates that clarity in Shakespeare arises not from simplification but from absolute commitment to the language itself.
As the trilogy progresses, its dramatic acceleration becomes almost intoxicating. Political alliances fracture overnight. Crowns exchange heads with dizzying speed. Children inherit vendettas before they inherit adulthood. The intimate court intrigues gradually assume the irresistible propulsion of organized crime epics, while moments of astonishing tenderness interrupt the carnage with heartbreaking force. Brown-Fried somehow maintains complete control over this enormous machinery, allowing the production to gather momentum until its final hours possess the breathless inevitability of classical tragedy.
The concluding tableau is among the most unforgettable images currently on any New York stage. The victorious Yorkist family assembles in apparent triumph, only to find themselves silently surrounded by every soul sacrificed along the way. The dead stand witness to history's endless cycle, exposing victory itself as merely another prelude to catastrophe. It is a breathtaking visual summation of everything Shakespeare has been arguing for five and a half hours: that ambition may seize kingdoms, but it can never escape the human cost engraved upon every crown.
One leaves this Henry VI not marveling that Shakespeare eventually wrote Hamlet, King Lear, or Richard III, but wondering why these extraordinary early histories have remained neglected for so long. Brown-Fried, NAATCO, and this incomparable company have accomplished something exceedingly rare: they have permanently altered the reputation of a canonical work. Their production is intellectually exhilarating, visually ravishing, emotionally overwhelming, and performed with a level of ensemble artistry that borders on the miraculous. It is not merely one of the finest Shakespeare productions in recent memory; it is one of the finest theatrical achievements New York has witnessed in years.
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Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on July 18, 2026. All rights reserved.
