King John (review)

On a stage littered with thousands of squares of colored confetti and full of balloons in shades of teal, purple, white, and royal blue, the Bastard cradled King John’s body in her arms. The detritus that filled the floor had gradually accumulated over the course of the play, which had begun orderly enough with those same balloons encased behind white wire mesh at the back of the Swan stage. During the first half, they were just visible above the top of the staircase that abutted the back wall and topped out at the floor of Gallery One (circle), filling the width of the Swan stage.

The staircase, stage floor, and voms were covered in an eighties-style brown carpet with a geometric pattern of interlocking circles. Beechwood blocks were placed on either side of the stage floor with two others built into the stairs. The Bastard emerged on the upper level, walked down the stairs and placed herself in the center of the stage. From behind her back, she pulled out a ukulele, coughed up a pick from her mouth, suggested a sing-a-long and began strumming Land of Hope and Glory. (A man in front of me uttered “Jesus Christ” when the female Bastard brandished the instrument and proceeded to place his hands over his eyes, a gesture he performed every time Pippa Nixon appeared on-stage; he and his companion left at the interval.) Encouraged by Nixon, most of the audience good-naturedly participated in a full-throated rendition of the patriotic tune. This prelude to Shakespeare’s play was the first of many surprising moments in Maria Aberg’s strikingly inventive production.

This was no sedate version of King John exploring themes of kingship, but a full-blooded return to an approach that had been taken by Buzz Goodbody in 1970: what Irving Wardle then referred to as a “strip cartoon.” The costume and sound design portrayed modern England in transition, beginning in the 1980s with champagne parties loosely associated with the Hooray Henry crowd; segueing into an extra-textual wedding feast which featured a karaoke rendition of the Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes hit I’ve Had the Time of My Life sung by the Dauphin and Blanche, complete with imitation Dirty Dancing moves; and finally ending with confetti and balloons covering the stage floor while King John desperately danced to a re-mix of Frankie Valli’s Beggin’.

Waldmann’s John was often overshadowed by Aberg’s boisterous stage business, the product of both the production’s use of music and the broadly comic way in which characters were portrayed: the dirty dancing of the newlyweds; a drunken, shirtless King of France carousing at the wedding; Blanche whooping and taking a photo like an overly excited (perhaps drunken) tourist as John finished his speech to the citizens of Angiers. As visually and aurally exciting as these moments were, they also had the effect of diminishing John by pushing him into the background: this was a man to whom events happened, not a king in charge of his destiny.

With a John who was overshadowed by the noise of his rowdy surroundings, Aberg’s production was one that highlighted the play’s women. Most striking was the conflation of Hubert with the Bastard, and the casting of a woman to play the role. The production succumbed to the (obvious) temptation to present the Bastard and John...