<b>THE LION IN WINTER</b> Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Through February
THE LION IN WINTER Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company

By Augustine Warner

Some day soon, Elizabeth II will die and be succeeded by Charles or William and it won’t really matter much.
In 1183, the succession to King Henry II mattered, a lot.
The king was old by the standards of the day and tired and he ruled as well as reigned and he faced a king of France who was young and energetic and angry about what England had done to France, in controlling much of what is modern day France.
King Philip wanted to change that.
It’s Christmas in James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter” and Henry (Vincent O’Neill) has pulled Queen Eleanor (Josephine Hogan) out of the prison palace he keeps her in and had her brought to the season’s revels.
She will join the king and his mistress Princess Alais (Renee Landrigan), King Philip Augustus (Adam Rath) and the three royal princes, Richard the Lionheart (Matt Witten), Geoffrey (Todd Benzin) and John (Nathan Andrew Miller) in the French castle of Chinon for the holidays.
That includes discussion of the royal succession and a conference with Philip about one thing and another.
The key issue is that Alais was sent to Henry years ago, along with a dowry, to marry Prince John and Philip wants a marriage or the money back.
Henry doesn’t have the cash and doesn’t want to return it anyway.
This is the aging and ailing lion holding off his cubs, after years of civil war over the throne.
Neither England nor France was the nation-state each would become and each dealt with powerful nobles who wanted the throne, as Henry V wanted both thrones.
Veteran of a civil war which had torn England apart in a fight over royal succession which led him to the throne, Henry had dealt with prior revolts involving his sons and he would again.
He was a man who believed the ends justified the means and the means were ruthless applications of force and blood and he had assembled a great empire in England, France and Ireland and it required an iron fist to maintain it all.
Richard, John and Philip all wanted it (or a piece of it) and Henry wants it all and Alais.
He can’t trust John or Richard and knows Geoffrey is plotting against him and Eleanor is willing to do anything to nail Henry and get her freedom.
As the one-time queen of France and mother of a king (not Philip) and mother of the three feuding princes and feudal owner of the richest province of France, the Aquitaine, she wants to return to power, not as the imprisoned queen.
The pivot of the play isn’t the relationship between the king and his sons but the relationship between the king and the queen because these are two people of power who know how to exercise it and want to continue exercising it, the king directly and the queen indirectly through her slimy sons and her former relative in Philip.
They are the most fully-formed characters in the play, with the three boys stereotypes, the bisexual bully Richard, the scheming Geoffrey and the ineffectually ambitious John.
Philip?
He’s a bisexual plot point.
Hogan and O’Neill are wonderful as the estranged royal couple.
They are of an age and an experience they can understand the tensions of the royal marriage.
This is parent and child material on stage, hard parents in a hard age dealing with brutal children.
How accurate is it all?
Who knows.
But, it makes great theater with some really strong performances from Hogan and O’Neill and some wonderful stage settings from Brian Cavanagh and a crew of stage managers and effective direction from Cavanagh.
That’s why “The Lion in Winter” is so much worth seeing.