SOURCE: Lemon, Brendan. “Henry V.” Financial Times (16 July 2003): 10.

In the following review, Lemon offers a mixed evaluation of Mark Wing-Davey's 2003 Delacorte Theater staging of Henry V in New York's Central Park. Although Lemon praises Liev Schreiber's “passionate” and “balanced” portrayal of Henry V, he notes that the production avoided risks.

Glossy magazines love to place Liev Schreiber in the trio of great thirtysomething New York stage actors, but unlike his oft-mentioned counterparts, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeffrey Wright, only Schreiber has the vocal mettle to scale the most heroic parts.

In the title role of Henry V, the Public Theatre's sole Delacorte production this summer, he must also mount the set. Leaping atop designer Mark Wendland's burlap-bagged barricades, to urge his soldiers forward, Schreiber cuts a marvelous figure: at the heart of a Manhattan summer ritual—free theatre in Central Park—he symbolises the city's Sinatra-associated theme song...