Imagine sitting so close to one of Shakespeare’s most colorful and beloved characters, Sir John Falstaff, that you can hear his labored breathing. That’s the lucky position I found myself in at a recent preview of a new staging of “Henry IV,” featuring an adaptation by an actor, director, and playwright, Dakin Matthews.

First staged at New York 22 years ago, Mr. Matthews’s version condenses the Bard’s two separate plays that follow the titular monarch and his son, Prince Hal, into one piece, clocking in at roughly three hours and 45 minutes. In the 2003 production, at Lincoln Center Theater, Falstaff — the deliciously dissolute old codger who cavorts with young Hal, at least until the latter gets his act together — was played by Kevin Kline.