Henry IV
Henry IV
Description
Running time: 3:40 minutes with two intermissions
Dakin Matthews’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts i and ii into a single three-act play covering Bolingbroke’s turbulent reign was last produced in New York in 2003 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater where it won multiple Tony Awards, as well as a special Drama Desk Award. In these beloved and gripping epic history plays from the 1590s, Shakespeare explores timeless questions about legitimate authority and how the private lives of rulers conflict with their public lives. A king beset with nagging doubts about his means of acquiring power frets over the dissolute habits of his wastrel son. Who will prove worthy? How is worthiness measured? No characters the Bard ever created are more vivid or indelible than the ones carousing, warring, sniping, and mercilessly tricking one another in these sweeping dramas about civil war. Director Eric Tucker is the artistic director of Bedlam theatre company, “the adventurously lo-fi theater troupe that has earned a reputation for joyfully reinvigorating classic texts.” (Sara Holdren, New York Magazine).
Henry IV parts i and ii adapted by Dakin Matthews into a single play are the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth plays by William Shakespeare in his thirty-eight-play canon which TFANA has produced. This production is made possible in part by the Theatre’s Completing Shakespeare's Canon Fund, with generous support from Ashley Garrett and Alan Jones, Frank Drury, and the Michael Tuch Foundation Inc.
Design by Paul Davis Studio / Paige Restaino
By William Shakespeare
Adapted by Dakin Matthews
Directed by Eric Tucker
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Artist Bios
dakin matthews
Adapter
Dakin Matthews (Adapter) Besides acting on stage in over 250 productions, including nine on Broadway (Camelot, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Iceman Cometh, Waitress the Musical, The Audience, Rocky, The Best Man, A Man for All Seasons, Shakespeare’s Henry IV) and on screen (250 TV appearances, including “Gilmore Girls,” “King of Queens,” and “The Gilded Age”), and 30 films (including True Grit, Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, and Zero Charisma), Mr. Matthews is an award-winning playwright (L. A. Critics Circle 2005 Award for The Prince of L.A.; Red Bull 2016 Short Play winner for ”Her Father’s Daughter”), Shakespearean dramaturge (Drama Desk Award for Henry IV), and script translator (including 5 Walker Reid Awards for translating Spanish Golden Age plays). He is also a Shakespeare scholar, the creator/host of the YouTube video series “Sheltering with Shakespeare,” a teacher of Shakespeare Masterclasses around the world, a former Artistic Director of three theatres, and an Emeritus Professor of English from Cal State East Bay.
eric tucker
Director
Eric Tucker (Director) is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Off-Broadway theater company Bedlam, for which he has directed The Crucible, Pygmalion, Sense and Sensibility, Saint Joan, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Other Off-Broadway include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Vanity Fair (The Pearl), Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 & 2 Workshop Production (TFANA). Other highlights include: Angels in America, parts 1 & 2, (Bedlam/Boston), Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (OSF), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Two River), Pericles (American Players), Mate (The Actors Gang). Tucker has won Off Broadway Alliance, Obie, Helen Hayes and Elliott Norton awards for his work. He has also been nominated for a Lortel and Drama League award.
Season Sponsors
Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2024-2025 Season Sponsors.
Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by the Bay and Paul Foundations, The Marlène Brody Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund at the New York Community Trust, The Dubose & Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, The Polonsky Foundation, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.
Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
