Closing the New York Shakespeare Festival’s twenty-fifth season at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park this year is a production of “Henry IV, Part I,” directed by Joe Papp. It’s fairly typical of Central Park Shakespeare in that the less you know about the play, the better off you are. The approach that Mr. Papp takes to “Henry” is roughly the same approach that the Marx Brothers take to a legal contract in “A Night at the Opera”: what he likes he keeps; what he doesn’t understand he tears off and throws away. He doesn’t seem to like the first Continue reading

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