SOURCE: Brantley, Ben. “Civil War Henry IV with a Punk for a Prince.” New York Times Current Events Edition (23 December 1993): C7, C10.

In the following review of Ron Daniels's 1993 back-to-back staging of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Brantley examines the director's anachronistic American Civil War setting and comments on the overall lack of cohesion in the dramas.

Talk about generation gaps. In Ron Daniels's lively but erratic staging of both parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV at the American Repertory Theater, the King and his wayward heir, Hal, appear to be separated by about 130 years.

The rebellious Prince is here portrayed as a platinum-haired punk who resembles the English rock star Billy Idol; his father, looking like a mustachioed general from a Matthew Brady daguerreotype, clearly belongs to the era of America's Civil War. Arduously stretching the liberties afforded by post-modernist theories of production, Mr. Daniels has created a wildly...