Michael Nicols as Barone Tito Belcredi and Vivienne Benesch as Marchesa Matilda Spina in ENRICO IV. Photo © Gerry Goodstein.

Excerpted from the Home News Tribune 9/13/02 and the Courier-News 9/21/02
By C.W. Walker - Correspondent

"Enrico IV" offers a number of pleasures, not least among them is a fascinating debate about the creation of self, the nature of roles in modern society, and how we become the masks we wear.

There's also a neat little"Twilight Zone" twist that demonstrates, once again, one must be careful what one wishes for. For obvious reasons, Pirandello's meditation appeals more to the head than the heart, giving us characters that are, for the most part, either frosty or enigmatic.

Perhaps to counteract the cerebral thrust of the play, director Bonnie J. Monte has racheted up the emotional angst. The "modern" visitors -- the Marchesa and her companions -- are played with the arch over-sophistication of an early 1930s movie, while Enrico and the other "medieval" folk are warmer, broader and more accessible. The contrast of the acting styles is a bit jolting at first, but as a concrete representation of the collision of two psychic worlds, it mostly works.

Monte also has assembled a first-rate cast from Festival regulars and visiting pros. With his robust voice and commanding presence, Sherman Howard is the sort of actor who'll play a scene to the hilt and all anyone else can do is get out of his way.

Still, Vivienne Benesch makes a suitable chilly foil for him, while Michael Nichols registers as a particularly oily snob. Surprisingly, however, some of the most enjoyable scenes are the ones involving the four servants (Jeffrey Bender, Kevin Rolston, Jay Leibowitz and Michael Stewart Allen) hired to play Enrico's "knights."

Their behind-the-scenes chatter is like ease-dropping on a couple of Disney World employees after they've taken their papier mache heads off and escaped the crowds.

The production design also is first rate, with Charles T. Wittreich Jr. providing a richly textured set, enhanced by Shelly Sabel's magical lighting.

For more of this review: http://www.thnt.com/thnt/story/0,21282,616100,00.html

"Sherman Howard's performance (in the title role) marks him as one of the titans of the American classical stage"
-Daily Record

"In the fierce title role, Sherman Howard is a major player indeed, maneuvering an acting journey that begins with a most believable disorientation and uncontestable derangement, and winds up with the cool mastery of a fine, feigned madness."
-The New York Times

"Bonnie Monte once again shows that not only will she take mad risks but make them pay off with seeming ease"
-Princeton Packet

"Sherman Howard dominates the stage, filling every darkened niche with his presence...In a play in which everyone is at least a bit crazy, he is the most mad - and the most lucid."
-Princeton Packet

"Ms. Monte has found, or perhaps added, the comedy, the pleasure, and the poetry in an obscure text. And the heart, even if it is broken."
-The New York Times

Excerpts from the Star-Ledger
review of ENRICO IV
"The title character of ENRICO IV doesn't show up for 40 full minutes into Luigi Pirandello's 1922 play. But when Sherman Howard finally enters and begins performing in the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival production in Madison, he is well worth the wait....He's quitely mad, then rip-roaring mad, before he becalms himself again. He has a tall posture-perfect leonine presence at times, yet can shrink pathetically when the words call for it. And so Howard goes, back and forth all evening, eyes narrowwing in truth whenever he delivers a profound thought, or narrowing in deceit, too, when he tries pulling a fast one on those yes-men."

"Bonnie J. Monte...has the pinpoint-perfect touch for this work....a surehanded grasp of Pirandello..."

"Jeff Bender is ever so deft and droll...(The Marchesa Matilda Spina) is vividly played by Vivienne Benesch...What enhances everything immeasurabley is Shelly Sabel's hauntingly effective lighting..."

'Enrico IV'
By: Stuart Duncan , TimeOFF 09/11/2002
The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival resurrects this 80-year-old play.

They gave director Bonnie Monte a gift at the opening-night party for Enrico IV at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. It was signed by all of the cast members, so undoubtedly it will serve as a nice memento, but it was a straitjacket. Most appropriate. Anyone these days who takes on a play by Luigi Pirandello must be at least a bit mad. When the play is 80 years old and apparently never staged since its New York debut in 1922 (under the title The Living Mask), the lunacy would seem to be confirmed.

Pirandello was all the rage of Europe in the 1920s. He wrote symbolic and psychological dramas in an era that was just discovering both as useful tools. He reveled in his reputation for "obscurity" of plot and characters. The plot of Enrico IV, for example, unfolds in a solitary villa in the Umbrian countryside, Italy, 1922. There lives a man long considered mad, supposedly driven to it by an accident at an elegant pageant. He was wearing the costume of King Henry IV, had studied biographical information and was acting the part with considerable prowess when he was thrown from his steed, hit his head and came to consciousness believing that indeed he was the king. He has been living as a recluse ever since, served by four guards, also in 12th century garb.

To his villa come a quintet of moderns, partly in curiosity, partly in an attempt to shock him into reality. But things are never as they seem with Pirandello. Like The Fantasticks, what seems clear by night is never quite so in the daylight. Thus, Act II clears some misconceptions left from Act I. And Act III - the evening is so exquisitely staged and so beautifully acted and directed - you must see for yourself.

The one thing essential for Pirandello is super diction and delivery, and the mostly veteran company at the Festival is seamless. Vivienne Benesch, who in past seasons has created Isabella in Measure For Measure and Rosalind in As You Like It, is breathtakingly elegant as the Marchesa. Michael Nichols is oily, devious and very funny as the Barone. Herman Petras is careful, conservative and exactly on target as the Doctor. The four soldiers who comprise the king's staff - Michael Stewart Allen, Jeffrey Bender, Jay Leibowitz and Robert Hock - are nicely delineated from one another, yet function superbly as an ensemble.

But the actor who turns the evening on its ear is Sherman Howard in the title role. New to the Festival and imported from his native California, after laboring long in the fields of such resident companies as ACT of San Francisco and Actors Theatre of Louisville, he dominates the stage, filling every darkened niche with his presence, massaging dialogue until it reveals its innermost meanings. In a play in which everyone is at least a bit crazy, he is the most mad - and the most lucid.

Charles T. Wittreich Jr.'s set design plays with the imagination, even as it sets the mood. Shelly Sabel's lighting complements nicely, and Bonnie Monte once again shows that not only will she take mad risks but make them pay off with seeming ease.

Enrico IV continues at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre, 36 Madison Ave., Drew University, Madison, through Sept. 29. Performances: Tues.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2, 8 p.m.; Sun. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $28-$41. For information, call (973) 408-5600.

Click here to see it online.

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