[In the following review of Mark Wing-Davey's 2003 Delacorte Theater staging of Henry V in New York's Central Park, the critic praises Liev Schreiber's “magical, subtle” portrayal of Henry V, but criticizes Wing-Davey's production as cynical and unbalanced.]

In Shakespeare's Henry V, in Central Park, Liev Schreiber shows us a young English king heading into war against France who's making all the right moves.

He's listened patiently while the long-winded clergy line up behind the war, and arrested traitors who thought they had him fooled.

Over in France, he gives the troops an encouraging word and (in one of this production's frantic nods to modernism) has a camera record it.

But despite the cool and the smarts, he's lacking something.

For all of his mastery of rhetoric, he wants heart—he needs the messy, sweaty smell of involvement. He wanders about the camp disguised among the common men and winds up defending himself and his war.

By the time he addresses his army in the St. Crispin's Day speech—dirty and in tears—we can feel his whole heart is in the affair. These common men are his brothers.

Before our eyes, Schreiber's king has become not less intelligent but more human. Later, as he moves around, paying court to the shy French princess (an appealing Nicole Leach), he shows that he's developed a heart in another sense.

It is a magical, subtle performance.

Unfortunately, director Mark Wing-Davey seems interested only in what can be ridiculed and mocked in war.

The English clergy are pompous and ridiculously costumed, and the common soldiers are got up like the cast of “The Sopranos” (Bronson Pinchot as Pistol is the funniest of them).

The French nobles are vain fops sunning themselves by a pool, while the French king is in a wheelchair and his queen is a drag queen. Battles and marriages are mere photo ops.

Some of this cynicism is justified by the text, but Shakespeare balances the picture.

Wing-Davey offers no such balance, but he does at least make space for Schreiber's calculating but combustible king.