Teresa Avia Lim in part two of NAATCO’s HENRY VI: A TRILOGY IN TWO PARTS at The Public Theater, adapted and directed by Stephen Brown-Fried. Photo by HanJie Chow.

By Kenji Fujishima

Back in 2018, Stephen Brown-Fried condensed all three parts of William Shakespeare’s Henry VI into a two-part, nearly six-hour experience for a National Asian American Theatre Company production featuring a 16-member Asian American cast. The Public Theater has brought that production back, allowing adventurous theatergoers to consider, among other things, whether these rarely produced early Shakespeare plays have as much to say to contemporary American audiences as they did to English audiences in the late 16th century.

Some of the advertising materials for this remount go the extra mile to make a modern-day connection, with this trailer in particular billing Henry VI as “the story that inspired Game of Thrones.” Thankfully, there’s more to contemplate in this formidable undertaking than merely how much George R. R. Martin cribbed from the Hundred Years’ War.

The invocation of that hit television series indicates the soap-opera-like appeal of this “trilogy in two parts.” To put it simply, Henry VI revolves around a series of power plays within and among nations. Part I, subtitled “Foreign Wars,” depicts England’s loss of its French territories to Charles, the Dauphin of France (Đavid Lee Huỳnh), helped in no small measure by Joan of Arc (Myka Cue). More importantly, it details the developing power struggle between Richard Plantagenet (Rajesh Bose) and the Duke of Somerset (Kimiye Corwin) under the rule of Henry VI (Jon Norman Schneider), recently crowned king after the death of Henry V. That conflict eventually metastasizes into the Wars of the Roses, which is the focus of Part II, “Civil Strife.”

To.read the entire review: https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-a-two-part-all-asian-american-henry-vi-returns-to-the-public-theater_1842893/