[In the following review, Bates examines two productions of King John: Northern Broadsides' production co-directed by Conrad Nelson and Barrie Rutter, and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production directed by Gregory Doran. Bates finds that the Northern Broadsides' production forcefully refuted any pretensions of nationalism and reflected Shakespeare's refusal to choose sides in the play's conflicts. Bates praises the RSC production for Doran's ability to evoke from his actors a remarkable depth of characterization.]

Rarely performed plays like King John, with their peaks of fashion and troughs of deep neglect, are truer barometers of the time than age-old favourites which never leave the stage. When such plays are revived, it is for a reason. The Victorians loved King John for its passion, especially the part of Constance, whose outraged defence of her son Arthur's claim to the throne thrilled their melodramatic souls. In more recent times, the play has been picked for its politics. In the late 1960s and early 70s, its cynical attitude towards real-politik and war brought it twice to the English stage. And it is politics which has brought it back now. John blusters to keep his little England from the meddling of France and Rome (“in Europe but not run by Europe” might be his phrase), while doing deals, selling out, changing allegiance, swapping sides and generally doing everything he can to stay in office.

The plot of King John lurches from reversal to reversal, making it less a history of U-turns than one of S-bends. A disputed succession draws England and France up to their full puny heights, until it suddenly seems expedient all round to scrap the political rhetoric and cut a deal. No sooner is this done than Rome intervenes by excommunicating John, and war is on again, until John's neck-saving submission to the Pope puts the whole business on hold for a second time. As the play staggers from war to peace to war to peace again, there is little to distinguish the two conditions. As, indeed, there is little to distinguish the two sides in the conflict. For the play has no obvious hero, no obvious demon. Instead, the world is run by “Commodity”, the universal rule of self-interest and one-upmanship. To that master all are slaves.

Northern Broadsides' production emphasizes this by dressing the cast uniformly, with only colour-coding to tell the two sides apart—gold for England, true blue for the French. This gives the whole play the feel of a chessboard. Stylized battle scenes are fought with two great kettledrums wheeled about the stage and designed, as the co-director Conrad Nelson tells us, to augment the “percussive dynamic” of the play. But the overall effect is more that of toy-soldier diplomacy, in which the pretensions of nationalism are savagely debunked and reduced to the level of Alice-in-Wonderland's croquet-disputes with the Queen of Hearts.

Barrie Rutter's production faithfully follows Shakespeare's refusal to make heroes of either side, but in doing so it runs the risk of sameness. With nothing really to distinguish the two parties, the depressing scenario of universal opportunism and corruption threatens to flatten everything out and to leave the play without contrast. There is no brooding melancholy to the first half, no Victorian Gothic “atmosphere”. In the second half, the emotional spectrum deepens, however. As a steely-haired Constance, Marie Louise O'Donnell's careful avoidance of hysteria in the opening scenes prepares us all the better for her later dementia and the chilling dignity of “I am not mad”. Fine Time Fontayne's characterization of King John traces a similar development from a crass, rather shallow figure at the start to a man finally broken by pathos and remorse. And the Bastard Falconbridge, compellingly played by Nelson, starts out by delighting in his part with all the exuberance of a self-made man, before he emerges sobered and humanized by the end.

This is a straight production, neither fussy nor overly psychological. A touring show, it uses minimal scenery or props, and makes full use of theatre's most basic material: the human body, gesture and voice. The awkward stripling Arthur doesn't say much, but, as played by Adam Sunderland—all pigeon chest and skinny elbows—he engages our sympathy through body language alone. In Act Two, Scene One—in which the newly minted alliance between England and France is just as newly broken by Rome—the shameless swapping of sides is economically realized as a ballet of clasped and unclasped hands.

For the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gregory Doran counters the play's tendency to make everyone look the same by demanding of his actors an uprecedented depth of characterization. Geoffrey Freshwater's King of France, for example, is no cipher in a meaningless war but a fully rounded character, distinguishable in mood, tone and motive from his adversaries. Guy Henry's rake-like John is a king who plays for laughs right up to the end, by which time, broken and dying, his devil-may-care jinks have a gallows humour which lends him genuine pathos. “What, mother dead?” is given the perfect comic turn, until a private moment of grief later on, when the loss of that battleaxe touches the heart and shows the two sides of this filially troubled king.

There are characters around whom the play's action pivots, but it is testimony to this excellent production's teamwork that all the parts come to seem dependent on one another. At one end of the scale is that master of Commodity, the foxy papal legate Pandulph (superbly played by David Collings), whose smooth talk and Jesuitical doublethink hatches and unhatches the plot. At the other end is the boy Arthur, whose loss drives his mother to distraction, the French to war, the English barons to desert, and John to an early grave. The decision to cast a child actor in the role mobilizes all our contemporary paranoia about the protection and safety of children. This Arthur spells innocence imperilled, and the effects of his presence are powerfully felt. Hubert's dastardly, if half-hearted, attempt to spear out the boy's eyes with red-hot pokers, duly disturbs; and, though a rather overdressed character at the start, Kelly Hunter's Constance later evolves into the kind of bereaved mother, whose public appeals drive home the ghastly impossibility of ever entering into, or sharing, such maternal grief.

Like Rutter, Doran uses stylization where he wishes to advance the visual impact of a scene, as in the flagpole-waving skirmishes, or the dispute between Constance and Blanche, which becomes a tableau of widow's black and bridal white. Everywhere else, it is the blend of stylization and naturalism that distinguishes his staging. In the nineteenth century, directors were obsessed with historical accuracy and modelled their costumes and sets on twelfth-century effigies and portraiture. Here, the proper insignia which each man wears on his sleeve betrays the director's respect for verisimilitude, though generally the costumes appear all the more naturalistic for being historically non-specific. Some scenes show how expertly the theatre can be used to make the feigned seem real. When Hubert and Falconbridge meet in the dead of night, the darkness of a wholly blackened stage fully communicates the fear and danger of the moment. And Arthur's fatal fall from the prison walls is realistic enough to warrant the boy's quiet reappearance in the wings.

Smooth without being slick, this is professional theatre at its best. The RSC King John humanizes Shakespeare's play, showcasing the skin-saving tactics of small-minded politicians without descending into caricature. It presents with subtlety and intelligence a play which, as Misha Glenny writes in the progamme notes, “has never seemed more relevant”.