"King John" at Ashland
*“Borrow’d Majesty”*/Play Review/: “King John,” /by William Shakespeare, at the New Theater,
//Oregon// Shakespeare Festival (OSF), //Ashland//./
At four centuries’ distance, we in our time stand about as far removed
from Shakespeare as Elizabethans were from the events detailed in /“King
John.”/ Yet, thanks to the psychological insight of Shakespeare’s script
and the ingenuity of director John Sipes’ Ashland production, the tale
remains as wickedly pertinent today as it must have been in the 1590’s.
The title character (played by OSF veteran Michael Elich) is an
all-too-familiar figure: a usurping, incompetent, unprincipled ruler who
tries to shore up his dubious legitimacy by plunging the world into
open-ended warfare.
After initial success, the tide of battle turns against King John. His
subjects desert him as “collateral damage” mounts unconscionably. Elich
invests his role with far more dignity and depth than ever evinced by
our contemporary commander-in-chief, but the overall storyline remains
painfully familiar.
With this play/ /Sipes makes his Ashland directorial debut/ /after more
than a decade overseeing “movement and fight” for 91 OSF productions.
This background shows; his taut stage blocking makes full use of the
intimate, theater-in-the-round setting, infusing even diplomatic
colloquies with all the tension of a cockfight.
Such skill comes in handy, for there’s a lot more parlaying than onstage
fighting in the world of “/King John.”/ In those days, as in our own,
the backroom pacts and spats of a few vainglorious, hip-shooting
“deciders” could send unseen thousands – or millions – to their deaths.
To underscore these ironies, designers William Bloodgood, Sigeru Yaji
and Alexander Nichols (responsible, respectively, for set, costumes and
lighting) trick out the play in World War I décor. They intercut
cyclorama projections of appalling carnage with the strutting and
preening of popinjays in epaulettes.
In the conclaves of power, the steeliest players turn out to be the
women. The King’s redoubtable mother (Jeanne Paulsen) squares off
against his sister-in-law (Robynn Rodriguez), who – with French backing
– promotes her teen-aged son as true heir to the English crown. Their
shrill bitchiness contrasts with the sweet innocence of the young prince
whose succession claim triggers all the fighting. Teen actress Emma
Harding, in the role, is even frock-coated to evoke the winsome Little
Prince of Saint Exupery’s famous children’s fable.
King John captures his juvenile rival on the battlefield and “renders”
him to a covert prison to be tortured to death. But even John’s
designated henchman (Armando Duran) finds himself, after a wrenching
soul-search, unable to do the bloody deed; he secretly spares the child.
Duran projects a gruff, proletarian humanity – a blessed contrast to all
the amoral blue bloods on stage.
Despite this last-minute reprieve, the boy dies in an escape attempt.
His mother’s towering grief elevates her from a self-promoting harpy to
a dignified symbol of all wartime bereavement. Rodriguez rises to the
occasion in her famous mourning scene: “I am not mad. I would to heaven
I were…Grief fills the room up of my absent child…Then have I reason to
be fond of grief.”
The main target of these imprecations is a conniving papal nuncio who
skillfully fans the flames of war to Vatican advantage. Derrick Weedon
renders this role with his usual silken snarkiness. In his unholy
amalgam of crass realpolitik and ideological zeal, this cardinal would
feel right at home in a K Street think tank – or a Tora Bora cave.
The cardinal’s cool calculation is juxtaposed against the hot
impetuosity of King John’s illegitimate nephew and staunchest
lieutenant, played with burning intensity by Rene Millan. This
personage, known simply as The Bastard, is a pure dramatic invention,
the only role in the play without any precedent in historic fact.
Nevertheless, Shakespeare elevates him to the status of a virtual
co-star, by far the most incisive – and decisive – character onstage.
We first meet him as a plaintiff in a probate case; raised as a country
squire, he’s cut out of his putative father’s will on grounds of dubious
paternity. At King John’s urging, The Bastard opts to renounce his petty
estate and embrace instead his illegitimacy as the out-of-wedlock son of
the late King Richard the Lion-hearted.
As a free-booting soldier-of-fortune, The Bastard finds himself among
the aristocratic high command but never quite one of them. This makes
him an ideal proxy observer on behalf of us, the audience; sort of like
an independent journalist who’s somehow got himself “embedded” in the
heart of CentCom.
At first The Bastard’s star-struck, thrilled to find himself in
“worshipful society, [as] fits a mounting spirit like myself.” But he
soon becomes disillusioned with his new-found playmates’ over-eagerness
to sell out their stated principles for the sake of personal or tactical
advantage (or “commodity,” as it is called in Elizabethan parlance).
He rails against “that purpose-changer, that sly devil…That smooth-fac’d
gentleman, tickling commodity.” Yet he resolves that “Since kings break
faith upon commodity/Gain be my lord, for I will worship thee.” But even
this cynicism gives way when confronted with the abyss of royal
skullduggery. The Bastard pronounces himself “amazed…among the thorns
and dangers of this world.”
John dies, poisoned, and the royal forces, under The Bastard’s command,
lie in rout. In the fog of war, though, the French misread the situation
and retreat, offering a truce. Through no fault of its own, England is
spared an invasion. The Bastard hails this equivocal outcome with a line
oft-cited by jingoists ever since: “Naught can make us rue/If England to
itself do rest but true.”
Any flag-waver who finds this edifying has simply not been paying
attention. In context, the quote is a suitably bleak punchline for a
thoroughly sordid parable.
Still, it may be the best available exit strategy for a quagmire war:
simply declare victory and get out before your adversary can transform
you into something other than yourself, which would be the worst defeat
of all. After the cynical depredations “borrow’d majesty,” it may be
that “commodity” is about the best one can do.
Labels: Reviews
