[In the following excerpted review, Clapp singles out several excellent performances in director Gregory Doran's “shrewd and playful” 2001 Royal Shakespeare Company production of King John.]

Suddenly King John, one of the least performed of Shakespeare's plays, is all the rage. Last month, Northern Broadsides belted it out in Halifax. Now it's at the Swan. And in Gregory Doran's marvellous new production, it comes up shrewd and playful and pertinent. Shot through with humour and despair, this study of political shenanigans presents diplomacy (alias spin) as a series of playground games played for high stakes; it involves a trio of sorrowful women and a host of cynical men.

From the moment that Guy Henry's febrile, flippant King John arrives late to greet the French Ambassador—the trumpets are on their second fanfare and the nobles are rolling their eyes in exasperation—it's clear that the throne is in insolent hands. He rushes in, putting on his crown as if he were pulling on a baseball cap; later, he dangles it in his hand and wags it reprovingly.

Instability is the key to Henry's clever, comical performance, which is enhanced by his tendency to spin out the verse in long, warbling lines. He can behave like an infant having a temper tantrum: stamping his foot at the papal emissary. He can produce cadenzas of high camp: flicking his hands, puffing his cheeks, pretending to swoon as he pronounces the word ‘excommunicate’. And he can slither with ease into vicious wiliness.

Why? Because the main principle governing these characters is political expediency: ‘commodity’, as it's called by the only plain-speaker—Jo Stone-Fewings's strong, yeomanlike Bastard. And this is made clear—terrifically and blackly—in Doran's production, where as soon as anyone sounds lofty, someone else yawns: at one point, characters gabble their speeches over each other in their eagerness to get themselves heard. David Collings is horribly believable as the unctuous papal legate, writhing with mirth as he sets his lethal traps.

King John can easily be staged as a dry discourse on this theme: that's not the case here. Stephen Brimson Lewis's lovely, almost bare design—a bleached wood throne set against a bare brick wall that's coloured white or striped with gold by lighting—is filled with drumming action. Battles are fought to the sound of trumpets by men brandishing flags like bayonets; there's a thrilling theatrical coup when the baby-faced Arthur swoops to his death from the upper gallery. And the three most sympathetic and eloquent characters—all women, played to the hilt—prove once more that Shakespeare was no male chauvinist.