'Brings theater to the people': Riverside Theatre's free Shakespeare in City Park returns for three weekends

Through imagination and craft, Lower City Park will be the site of a king's journey to the throne with the return of Riverside Theatre’s Free Shakespeare this weekend in Iowa City.

The theater will present “Henry V” each weekend from June 17 to July 3. The tradition, stretching back more than a decade, brought “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Comedy of Errors” to the Riverside Festival Stage in Iowa City last year.

This year's three-weekend run is an opportunity for the theater to experiment and “build on the success of last year,” according to Adam Knight, Riverside's producing artistic director.

Knight told the Press-Citizen in October that, over the course of 15 shows of “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Comedy of Errors,” 4,389 people attended, making last year's Free Shakespeare programming its "best year ever."

“Henry V” follows the English king in the early 15th century as he invades France to claim the French throne.

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Knight, who directs this play, told the Press-Citizen that "Henry V" is, in some ways, Shakespeare’s most “baldly theatrical play.”

“There's a chorus who introduces the play and then introduces each act and basically sets up for the audience the fact that anything we do onstage is going to have to have the audience's imagination to help us," he said. "But if you'll imagine that what we do show you is real, imagine when we show you six people that there are 5,000 people, then we can all tell the story together."

Katy Hahn plays King Henry, reprising the role after playing Prince Hal, a young King Henry, in Riverside Theatre’s “Henry IV Part 1” in 2019.

The actor told the Press-Citizen that, while she always loved Shakespeare, the role of King Henry had never been on her radar.

Hahn playing the role of a male character is a notable decision, according to Knight.

Knight said he is always looking for ways to expand who gets to tell these stories.

Not only does it give actors an opportunity in a role they might not otherwise play, but a chance for an audience member to hear the text or experience the play differently, he said.

“It's really important for us to challenge our ideas about gender and how it's represented in the media, and I think that Shakespeare gives us a really great opportunity to do non-traditional casting, to have women playing men because back in his day, men played women,” Hahn said.

Hahn said one of the most “powerful” parts in doing “Henry IV Part 1” was finding out that there were girls in the audience, watching Hahn play a king and hold her own against characters twice her size. The theater received letters from the young girls, who remarked how they wanted to be just like Hahn’s character.

Other performers from “Henry IV Part 1” return for this production as well.

For “Henry IV Part 1,” Riverside Theatre changed the pronouns in the script to reflect Hahn in the role and set the play around World War I. Despite some of the returning cast, “Henry V” won’t stick with those concepts. Knight said he wanted to go back and look at how to best tell this story.

“Keeping Shakespeare’s story as is felt like the stronger choice, and then allowing different actors to play an uncle, a brother, a king. And when Katy says she's King Henry we believe her,” Knight said.

For Hahn, the role feels like a continuation of the character she played in 2019.

"Even though it's a different time period, different gender, I feel like, as an actor, the things I'm tapping into are the character's objectives and obstacles and what is he doing to get what he wants,” Hahn said.

Riverside Theatre goes to 'great lengths' to tell a relevant, comprehensible story

Before every performance will be a “green show,” a short, humorous play that serves as an introduction to Shakespeare and the themes in the play.

That will begin at 7 p.m.

“I think that one of the things we've realized in producing this play during this time is how much the idea of a ruler of one country invading another country and trying to take it over is going to resonate with the war in Ukraine right now,” Hahn said.

“Something that we're trying to do is to present these characters as humans with all their complexities and to not just show Henry as this perfect war hero, but also show the darker side of leadership, the darker side of war and what does it take to win a war,” she said.

What is the cost is the big question the play will ask, Hahn said.

Hahn’s first Shakespeare in the Park show was in 2014.

Shakespeare in the Park didn’t become free until 2018. That makes the programming all the more special to Hahn, who said people have enough barriers to enjoying Shakespeare to begin with.

A free Shakespearean show might be more appealing than paying for a ticket for someone who isn’t fully interested or understands Shakespeare’s works.

For audiences unsure of whether “Henry V” is something for them, Hahn said the theater has gone to “great lengths” to make sure it's telling the clearest story possible, one that is "vibrant" and "relevant" to today. She called it a “fast-paced, exciting” play.

“I'm so glad to be a part of something that brings theater to the people and gives them that opportunity to enjoy Shakespeare the way that I think it's meant to be enjoyed, with people of all walks of life in a lovely setting right there in nature,” she said.

"Henry V" begins at 7:30 p.m. in Lower City Park, located at 200 Park Road. Visit Riverside Theatre's website for more information.

Paris Barraza covers entertainment, lifestyle and arts at the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Reach her at PBarraza@press-citizen.com or (319) 519-9731. Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Riverside Theatre's free Shakespeare in Lower City Park returns