Theatre review: King John (RSC / Swan)

In a theatrical landscape experimenting excitedly with gender-flipped, gender-blind and gender-neutral casting, it's good for a company to find its own niche, although the RSC's take seems to be an eccentric one: Casting women in male title roles, but largely going with the ones male actors weren't in any particular hurry to play in the first place. So a couple of years ago there was a female Cymbeline, and now the unloved - both in-universe and within the canon - King John, as Rosie Sheehy takes the nominal lead in Eleanor Rhode's production. John - the gender-flipped characters are largely given dresses in Max Johns' design but the pronouns stick to what Shakespeare wrote - has inherited the throne from his much more popular brother Richard the Lionheart, along with the usual convoluted politics with England and France fighting over claims to each other's kingdom.

The first major skirmish is solved in the time-honoured fashion of marrying off a pair of royals from both sides, but the peace barely outlasts the wedding ceremony thanks to the interference of the Catholic Church.

We first meet Sheehy's John downing a prairie oyster for a post-coronation hangover and it sets out the production's theme of people who just want to have a nice party but see them constantly devolving into bloodbaths (and I'll get out of the way now any mention of contemporary relevance to the story of someone who fancies power, gets it, and is then horrified to discover it involves actual work, not to mention a flair for diplomacy he doesn't possess.) Of course John also has to deal with a pretty valid threat to his own claim to the throne, since his dead older brother Geoffrey has a living heir, Arthur, who's been raised in the French court.

John's most genuine ally is his illegitimate nephew Philip the Bastard; it's one of the more scene-stealing roles in the play and Michael Abubakar nicely shows the character's conflict as he tries to act as the King's conscience, but is ultimately too loyal to turn against him when his behaviour goes beyond the pale. Also very much conflicted is Tom McCall's Hubert, Arthur's would-be assassin; sometimes portrayed as a bit of a creep whose heart gets melted by the boy, here it seems more like he didn't really know what he was agreeing to when he signed up for the murder and Arthur uncovers his humanity. (Before falling off a cliff. Which is done fairly respectfully here which is a shame, given the unintentional black humour of the scene is usually one of the more memorable things about the play.)

The rest of the memorable characters are female, and that's mostly how Shakespeare wrote them: There's John's no-nonsense mother Elinor (Bridgitta Roy) and her nemesis, Arthur's mother Constance - the always-great Charlotte Randle really gives a comic edge to her inserting herself into every argument between the nations, proclaiming her widowhood as a reason she should be listened to like Ulrika Jonsson prefacing every sentence with "as a mother." And one thing I love about King John is the way he gives voice to those caught in the crossfire: Having been married off to the Dauphin (Brian Martin) for the sake of a peace that ends at the wedding reception, John's niece Blanche is left on the side of a former enemy she just met, unable to return to her former home, and Nadi Kemp-Sayfi convincingly gives us her anguish at the fact that whoever wins the next battle, she loses.

The other big star of the play gets another gender-flipped casting, and Katherine Pearce as the shit-stirring Pandulph leaves us in no doubt that the Cardinal's actions are entirely motivated by glee at the power the Church has over kings. In general this is a fun production with good performances and battles represented by food-fights and boxing matches, but it does come with one major caveat from me.

One of my unwritten reviewing rules is not to negatively compare a production to a specific earlier one (I just don't think "I saw a better production before you were born, you should have seen that one" is a particularly helpful comment, Michael.) But if describing this King John as taking place in the ruins of parties sounds familiar, that's pretty much what Maria Aberg's 2012 production did in the same theatre, the last time the RSC tackled the play. I know I'm not the only one to have very fond memories of that show and even if they are seven years apart it seems bizarre for the company to follow up a high-concept take with a very similar one. In fact as I never quite got the relevance of the 1960s design theme - which extends to dance breaks during scene changes - I did wonder if it was only there to make the show look distinct from the last time. This is a good production, perhaps a great one if taken in isolation, but with knowledge of the RSC's recent history it comes with a dose of déjà vu.

King John by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 21st of March at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Steve Tanner.