Review: Pop culture and populist revolt collide in Old Globe's thrilling 'Henry 6'

Productions of “Henry VI,” an early history play by Shakespeare written in three parts, don’t come around all that often. I’ve seen two in my lifetime, both of them wisely abridged into two parts. The Shakespeare of “Henry VI” isn’t yet the Shakespeare who wrote “Hamlet,” “ Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2” or “King Lear.

” He’s still wrestling with the influence of Christopher Marlowe. The thunderous rhetoric, which crowds out introspective soliloquy, moves into Broadway power ballad territory when emotions run high. And the bloody melodrama of history is indulged with the malevolent glee that made Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great” Elizabethan box office gold.

What “Henry VI” may lack in subtlety, however, it more than makes up for in propulsive excitement. Barry Edelstein’s entertaining two-part adaptation of “Henry 6” at the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre gives Shakespeare’s epic an audience-friendly update. The shift from Roman to Arabic numeral in the title suggests the revival’s relaxed, contemporary tone.

The broad-strokes treatment, by turns suspenseful and rollicking, works well in an outdoor summer Shakespeare presentation that makes the Wars of the Roses seem Spielberg-ian in intrigue and suspense. The production succeeds in making “Henry 6” not only accessible but also relatable. It doesn’t take much to make the plight of a nation imploding from partisan strife and civil unrest speak to a MAGA-weary America.