SOURCE: Brantley, Ben. “An Evening in the Park with a Playboy Prince.” New York Times (16 July 2003): E1.

In the following review of Mark Wing-Davey's 2003 Delacorte Theater staging of Henry V in New York's Central Park, Brantley dismisses Wing-Davey's “flashy, flabby” production and contends that the director “devised a Henry V that shirks from seriousness on the unavoidable subjects of war and patriotism.”

Where is that old muse of fire when you need her? That goddess of inspiration, beseechingly evoked in the prologue of Henry V, appears to be on vacation this summer. Maybe she's been co-opted as a houseguest by some movie producer in the Hamptons. In any case she is definitely keeping her distance from the flashy, flabby production of Shakespeare's gung-ho military history play that opened last night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

Though the title role of the playboy prince turned commanding king...