The Life and Death of King John (review)

Striding across the stage as he railed against "commodity," Christopher Guthrie pumped his fists as Philip, the Bastard, punctuating his comments on the conflicting interests that crossed Cincinnati Shakespeare's production of The Life and Death of King John: "Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!" Guthrie's Philip, the illegitimate son of King Richard I, delivered his lines in a crescendo, rebuking the move from "a resolved and honorable war / To a most base and vile-concluded peace." In this speech, as in the production's key moments, Guthrie's Bastard captured the frenzy of political and personal contest that roils the unstable kingdom, challenging King John's monarchal line to hold off France by outlasting young Prince Arthur's competing claim to the English succession. Cincinnati Shakespeare's production solved the murky political calculus of Shakespeare's early history play by returning the play to its basic components. Travis McElroy's restrained set for King John featured little more than an upstage platform; Heidi Jo Schiemer's period costumes complemented the minimalist wood set-properties. Brian Isaac Phillip's production still encountered a few moments of obscurity—it would be nearly impossible to stage this problematic text without stumbling on some of its more uneven terrain—but his solutions even-handedly treated the play's emotional and political conflicts, freeing the players to stage this odd piece of Shakespeare crisply.

Among the challenges King John presents to an acting company and its audience is the frustrating disappearance of female characters from the stage—Blanche, Constance, and Queen dowager Eleanor all vanish—without sufficient exposition of the events that have led to these moments. "Where is my mother's ear / That such an army could be drawn in France, / And she not hear of it?" King John demands in 4.2. The Messenger's reply hastily follows: "My liege, / Her ear is stopped

Billy Chace (left) as King John with Jim Hopkins (center) as Cardinal Pandolf, Jeremy Dubin (front right) as King Philip of France, John Scheller (back right) as Duke of Austria, Cary Davenport (background left) as Earl of Pembroke, and Jolin Polasek (background right) as Earl of Salisbury. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's 2011 production of The Life and Death of King John, directed by Brian Isaac Phillips.

Photo courtesy of Rich Sofranko.

with dust … / … /And as I hear, my lord, / The Lady Constance in a frenzy died." That exchange leaves a director with the unenviable task of distinguishing this unheralded double death from the plot's continuing power struggles, which ultimately push the loss of these matriarchs from the stage. Brian Isaac Phillips directed the Cincinnati production to give more depth to this fleeting moment with a ghost procession of the dead mothers walking silently down the aisles: with Corinne Mohlenhoff 's Constance and Sherman Fracher's Queen Eleanor on either side of the audience, all stage action stopped. This pause in the military and political turmoil broke the production's pace, opening a space to grieve the play's lost matriarchy and lending gravitas to a moment that otherwise passes by too suddenly. Feminine faces guided the production at key moments, including a lovely prologue ballad composed by Sara Clark and sung by Lauren Shiveley (Blanche), which refreshed our acquaintance with Plantagenet family history and recalled Cincinnati's production of The Lion in Winter a year ago.

Billy Chace as King John and Sherman Fracher as Eleanor in Cincinnati Shakespeare's 2011 production of...