Head: The Musical.

Laila Abdalla is an associate professor of English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and former professor at McGill University.

Head begins when Henry VIII has become taken by Jane Seymour, and relates how the king and Seymour’s aunt scheme for the removal of Anne Boleyn. Renaissance courtly machinations are infamous, and because Henry was particularly active in flexing his absolute power to serve himself, members of court had to become virtuosos at playing the game.

Patterson has sound knowledge of Renaissance concerns, such as the Fool’s role to expose and comment on the truth, and of the history of the event, such as the role of Mark Smeaton and the importation of a French swordsman in order to behead the queen. English decapitation, performed by an axe, necessitated more blows and was more excruciating. The historical content is adequately developed as the context for the musical interludes.

The play’s dual nature—historical tragedy and musical comedy—is mostly effective. When the play focuses on Anne, however, this efficacy falters. The audience is torn between Anne’s truly poignant circumstances and the comic irony of Henry’s convoluted self-justification. While the audience is invited to invest emotionally in Anne’s situation, it is simultaneously prevented from so doing by the current of black humour that underlies the play. The musical interludes are intended to interrupt moments of high emotion, such as the tango “The Swordsman of Calais” (“what a pleasure it is to be taken by the swordsman of Calais, / with his shining gleaming length of tempered steel”) and the jaunty “Kill the Brat,” sung by Seymour and her aunt as they plot Princess Elizabeth’s future. This emotional divestment does not always succeed. Renaissance comedy knew how to suspend the audience’s emotional investment in the anxiety created by the characters. Twenty-first century black humour does not attempt to make this differentiation, and this play is somewhat a hybrid in intent.

As a musical, Head is intelligent and entertaining; as history, it is truncated and somewhat slick and flippant, veering, for example, between modern slang and Renaissance expression. Finally, however, the story being told is fascinating, the lyrics entertaining, and the pace effective.