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DocuSign Envelope ID:Al391C8C-C731-4683-B498_D5B7783F86E4 eets WWI in Into the Breach I Theater I Indy Week <br /> Arts »Theater October 15, 2014 <br /> Theater review: Henry V meets WWI in Into <br /> the Breach <br /> By Byron Woods <br /> Igor Stravinsky and choreographers from Vaslav Nijinsky to Emanuel Gat <br /> have shown us that the rites of spring are stark. But in his new work at <br /> the ArtsCenter, INTO THE BREACH, regional actor, director and <br /> playwright Ian Bowater shows us that their severity pales compared to the <br /> rites of harvest. <br /> It's late July 1914 when we meet a quartet of boys working in a wheat field <br /> near Stratford-Upon-Avon. Some have completed their studies at a local <br /> school; others will graduate soon. From a flashback, we already know that all <br /> took part in a school production of Henry V, Shakespeare's historical drama <br /> about the glories and the costs of warfare, during the conquest of France <br /> and the Battle of Agincourt. <br /> Now, new conflicts are in the offing. One month earlier, Archduke Franz <br /> Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, and European and Asian countries <br /> are taking sides in preparation for a fight. In a few weeks, England will <br /> declare war on Germany and enter into what ultimately will be called World <br /> War I. <br /> But at present, on a calm midsummer afternoon, the boys scythe the wheat <br /> and bind the sheaves. As they do, even those who can see the coming <br /> conflict cannot imagine the scope of the bloody harvest just beyond the <br /> horizon: one they all will be a part of. <br /> Bowater follows these boys—and their English teacher, Duncan (David Byron <br /> Hudson), a first lieutenant in the reserves—into the conflict, where they're <br /> reunited later at a military field hospital. Their mission there is to entertain <br /> the patients by remounting parts of their production of Henry V, and assist <br /> in the recovery of one of their own, Fellowes (a poignant Peter Vance). <br /> In the process, old friendships and contentions are revived. After being <br /> drafted into the service corps, Holden Dustin Johnson), the one most <br /> http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/henry-v-meets-wwi-in-into-the-breach/Content?oid=4269302&mode=print 113 <br />