The challenge of Henry
By Robert Crew
May 27, 1989
Blond, blue-eyed and boyish, Geraint Wyn Davies is riding the crest of a wave. And he's clearly enjoying every minute.
He has starred in a TV series (Airwolf), had a lead role - as the bionic baddie - in the recently aired TV movie The Return Of The Six Million Dollar Man and leads in Diamonds and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
He was in a successful commercial production of Sleuth, which also starred Patrick Macnee and was directed by John Wood. At the Stratford Festival, he's given eye-catching performances in the title role of Pericles, as D'Artagnon in The Three Musketeers and as Hortensio in The Taming Of The Shrew.
And, this season, he has one of the plum Shakespearean roles for younger actors, that of the dashing young King Henry in Henry V, opening June 3, plus the key part of Bassanio in The Merchant Of Venice, opening Wednesday.
Wood is his director again for Henry V.
Seek humor
"I wanted to play the Hal out of him," Wyn Davies quips. "My natural tendency is to want to laugh and seek the humor in situations, both as an actor and as a guy. John has very rightly and very stringently kept me from doing that."
He admits that the play tends to be seen as a vehicle for its lead actor although "there's a lot we're trying to do to make it more of an ensemble piece, more of a dialogue as opposed to a monologue.
"It's terribly exciting; it's also terribly lonely. He (Henry) cannot rely on any of the other characters in the show. There is no one's word that he can accept, except for his own and God's. Those are the two people he's got to talk to, himself and God."
Wyn Davies is not worried about being compared to the patriotic, Laurence Olivier version that was made into a movie during World War II.
"The man is brilliant, it just drives you crazy. But that (approach) doesn't translate right now, not with me playing the part, not with John directing it, not with all the people we've got doing it.
"The film did take all the bad parts out of Harry. The role is very hard in a lot of ways, you have to be hard of heart. The generosity, the mercy and the compassion that you show people is a very selective kind of thing.
"It's wild. I've played a lot of different kinds of things, but this is the first one of this sort of scope that I've done in Shakespeare - all the things in Pericles don't add up to this.
"The resonances from so many performances don't bother me. It's wonderful to throw your straw into the hay basket."
Bassanio in The Merchant Of Venice is a challenge of a different sort.
"Everyone says Bassanio is such a drip but I can't think that way. I was prejudiced by other people's attitudes, by everything you read about the guy - that he's a gold digger, he's an adventurer and so on. That was sticking in my head for a long time. But now I think we've got something."
He remembers getting a phone call from Andrew Gillies in 1984, when Gillies was Bassanio in the last Stratford production of The Merchant Of Venice.
"He said, 'Ger, no matter who's playing Portia, no matter how much money they offer you, no matter what the theatre is, no matter who the director is, do not, I repeat do not, play Bassanio.'
"He was having the worst time of his life, though I gather it worked out quite well for him. At that time he was frustrated.
Gets nod
"Well, of course, five years later, who gets the nod? Now I'm taking it on!'
But he relishes the thought of playing Young Fashion in the Restoration comedy The Relapse that opens July 28.
"With Brian Bedford as the fop and Richard (Monette) directing? It will be like going to camp."
This year's atmosphere at the festival is good, Wyn Davies says. "There's a relaxation that I have not felt before. And it's comfortable, but not in that boring sense of the word.
"There seems to be a lot of good will; maybe it's because we are doing a lot of plays that deal with good will and mercy and repentance."
Copyright 1989 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.