King John
4thNovember 2019, The Swan Theatre
I had quite the obsession with Elinor of Aquitaine when I was younger. I think it started with Jean Plaidy whose ‘Eleanor’ was quite a romantic figure. Then I read everything I could get my hands on. What was it that appealed about this She-Wolf? I think it was the ballsiness; the ability to turn any situation to her advantage. Your first husband, the King of France, no longer wants you so you make a bee-line for the King of England despite his being ten years your junior. Then you only go and outlive him and all the while showing your mettle as a woman producing a dynasty that went onto dominate the monarchies of most of Europe.
So I knew the history but I did not know Shakespeare’s rarely performed King John. Just as well, perhaps, because if I had been particularly fond of the play I might have been upset to find that in this current performance, John was being played by a female actor. She was not playing the role as a woman, per se, in that her name had not been feminized or the text changed to imply a change of gender, as was the case in the recent production of Taming of the Shrew. But neither was there an attempt to disguise her true sex. I can’t say what this added to the play and neither does anyone try to justify it in the programme. Having never seen the play before, I will hazard that it took nothing away from the text either. Not least because Rosie Sheehy, playing John, has such a beguiling stage presence and a cat-like elegance of movement but also because ‘King John’, for me, was not much about King John.
John was Elinor’s youngest son. Although his mother is in many of the play’s scenes, she is given relatively few lines to speak. Presumably Shakespeare felt that history had said enough about Elinor. The character for me who steals the play, both on paper and in this superb production, is Constance, Geoffrey’s widow. She believes that her son Arthur, Duke of Brittany, has the superior claim to the throne of England. Certainly, if we understand primogeniture correctly then she is right. It is not just a desire for power that ignites Constance’s maternal indignation but her desperation seems to stem from her awareness that whilst John conquers England and Normandy, her son will not be safe. Ethan Phillips, who played Arthur so touchingly, begs of his mother, “I do beseech you, madam, be content.” But Constance cannot be content because she understands what the other characters do not, that her son’s life must be at risk. If ‘King John’ were to be given a subtitle, as with so many of Shakespeare’s plays, it could perhaps be, ‘Look what I started’. As with Macbeth, who does not fully realise the consequences when he first entertains the idea of killing King Duncan, so King John does not realise fully the consequences of declaring war on France over his claim to the English throne. The voice of reason is spoken by ‘mad’ Constance who in this performance was played so effectively by Charlotte Randle. The whole production was given a mid-century gangster movie feel. And Randle’s Constance was the perfect gangster widow, a moll, a Kray’s cast off, she would have looked at home behind the bar of the Queen Vic. And from this unlikely Cockney queen came one of the most moving soliloquys, I’m prepared to say, of all Shakespeare:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!
Randle’s Constance tore at her hair as she delivers this to the unsympathetic King of France and eventually convinces him of her sanity. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I watched and I would return again just for that scene. I tried to think when it was that I was last so moved watching Shakespeare and I concluded that it was when I last saw Richard III in that very same theatre. There are many parallels between the two plays. Not least, that Shakespeare gives the most honest and heart-rending speeches to women. I refer to the scene where Queen Margaret and Queen Elizabeth mourn their dead sons. Dead sons was something that Shakespeare knew about only too well.
So you could go and see this performance for just that scene. However, there is much else to recommend it. The music was something between Mike Myers and the Godfather and the cast sporadically broke out in formation dancing, as if in a 1960s spoof spy film. This sounds unlikely, I know but was tremendously effective at exerting the influence of each side of the war. It also showcased how well actors move, this being an important facet of their skills set. It was fun and dramatic and culminated in a food fight at the wedding of the Dauphin and Blanche that ended as no food fight should ever end, with bloodshed.
This play has intrigued me and I would love to see another interpretation of it. The RSC has sent me happily to the text and I’ve read it a couple of times and wonder, given this fascinating time of history where powerful women abound, why it is not performed more often?
