Henry VI: Rose Rage, Property Law, and Ticket-Taker-Tag

Henry VI - Parts I, II, & III
The Connecticut Theatre, Box 511 - Washington, DC
November 19, 2012

Brad - A
Chelsea - C



Property rights are like a bundle of sticks; similarly, going to a Shakespeare play is like a bundle of sticks.  One stick is leaving the house, another eating dinner out, and still another sitting in an uncomfortable chair behind some unreasonably large man.  Yes, we watched Rose Rage on TV at our house, but our evening included a majority of the sticks that comprise seeing a Shakespeare play live.

Since January, we'd been planning on seeing the Henry VI trilogy in November in New York City.  The production date worked with our project, our wedding, and our dog --- he is very picky when it comes to play selection.  Two weeks before the production dates, the theatre company moved the production to the Spring. The freakin Spring.  Desperate times called for desperate measures.  So, we decided to watch a video-taped production of Rose Rage --- an excellent two-play adaptation of the Henry VI trilogy.

The Hidden Room Theatre put the production on in August of 2012 in Austin, Texas.  It got rave reviews, and luckily, someone video taped it.  And put it on the internet.  So, we did every part of going to a play except seeing live actors.

We dressed nice:

We went to dinner:

We arrived at the door maturely:

Yo could you tell me where is door 3?

We gave our tickets to an adorable ticket-taker:

Then we found our seats:

The ticket-taker ended up sitting in front of us, typical!

And we watched four hours of Henry VI.  Because it is three parts, I will not spend time summarizing. Instead you can read about the War of the Roses yourself.

The video quality was not great, but it wasn't bad.  We could understand everything they said.  This company decided to use men for all of the parts.  Surprisingly, this was the first company we saw that used exclusively men.  They did a great job.  There were several fight scenes, and they were good.  Also, this company makes all of its costumes using historic techniques.  I am not sure why, but they looked good.

A great evening. A great play.  A great night.  Yeah, we watched a video of a live production.  But we went out, had a great time, and watched a great play.  It counts.

Brad VI