Ladies First

Too often, though, Potter diminishes the power of his source material by focusing almost exclusively on Margaret. Because most of Henry VI, Part One goes by the wayside, for instance, we're never introduced to that other famous female warrior in the chronicle, Joan de Pucelle (aka Joan of Arc), whose actions might remind the audience that Margaret isn't the only undervalued woman who takes up her country's cause -- especially when its leaders least respect her. Nor do we get a chance to meet, much less hear about, Lord Talbot and his son, John. In Shakespeare's original, the two English warriors die in each other's arms in an episode that foreshadows a crucial scene in Part Three, when a father discovers the body of his dead son on the battlefield and a son finds his dead father -- all while King Henry sits on a nearby hill and frets about bloodshed that he, of all people, feels powerless to prevent.

By cutting significant characters and shortening others' revelatory scenes, Potter changes and dilutes the context of Margaret's struggle -- which can be summed up as trying to "make it" in a man's world. Inexplicably, Potter cheapens Margaret's most famous speech, from Act IV, scene iv of Richard III, by using a few lines from it as an end-of-play send-off -- when the speech in question isn't a solitary play-ending valedictory but a penultimate indictment that, in Richard III, anyway, Margaret delivers in the presence of two women whose destinies mirror hers. And Potter mercilessly cuts Henry's most famous speech, "This battle fares like to the morning's war," a magnificent monologue that reveals much about the substance of Henry's character. Sure, he's "more given to prayer than worldly matters," but whittling down Henry's ruminations merely makes him sound like an idiot instead of a too-reflective sort who, since birth, has tragically relied on others -- including the Almighty -- to tell him what to do.

What's strange is that, by Potter's own admission, the great majority of Queen Margaret is lifted directly from Shakespeare's plays. So Potter is still asking the audience to view Margaret principally through the Bard's lens, which shows her as a catalyst and counterpoint to action -- not the central, heroic figure that Potter tries to make of her. By sticking with Shakespeare's basic storyline and treatment but altering both to emphasize Margaret, Potter has changed the focus of the plays without providing enough extra material to make Margaret the trilogy's leading character. Put another way, he's made a miniseries out of a TV show's supporting player -- a vibrant supporting player, to be sure -- while reducing the roles of the main characters and keeping the storyline, structure and dynamics intact. Which is sort of like giving Frasier his own series by watering down the other characters on Cheers and keeping the show set in a Boston bar.

If Potter were to add his own material -- especially some that illuminates Margaret's life before she marries Henry -- instead of distorting Shakespeare's trilogy, he might succeed in making Margaret into a heroic figure on a par with, say, the Bard's Richard II, Henry V or Richard III. As it is, she seems like a woman who, as she crawls toward banishment, has left too much unsaid. That might be a clever way to get the audience to see what happens to her next season in the CSF's planned production of Richard III, but it doesn't do enough to make Potter's brave attempt a compelling portrait.