Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
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by William Shakespeare, directed by Tim Carroll
Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford
May 28-September 27, 2014
Lewis: “Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale” (King John, Act 3, Scene 4)
One might think that after his disastrous production of Romeo and Juliet last year, British director Tim Carroll would not be invited back to Stratford. Yet he has, and not only that, but he has garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play for his production of Twelfth Night on Broadway and thus has become a hot commodity. Despite the New York critics’ rapturous response to Twelfth Night, Carroll’s current production of Shakespeare’s King John only reinforces the impression that this purveyor of so-called “Original Practices” is unable to translate his theory into engaging theatre.
With Romeo and Juliet, Carroll’s goal was to present the play as it would have been done in Shakespeare’s time in an outdoor theatre like the Globe. One impediment to achieving that goal is that the Festival Theatre is an indoor theatre and leaving the lights up throughout the performance was never going to be the same as seeing the play under an open sky. With King John, Carroll’s goal is to present the play as it would have been done in Shakespeare’s time in an indoor theatre like Blackfriars. This is idea is even more fanciful. Shakespeare did write plays both for outdoor theatres and indoor ones, but King John was not one of the latter.
Shakespeare’s King John was first mentioned in 1598 and stylistic analysis places it date of composition at around 1596. Child actors played at Blackfriars from its founding in 1576 until 1608 when Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men, took it over. So if Carroll really wanted us to see how King John would look in 1596, he would have to have the play acted by children. This year Shakespeare’s Globe opened the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, its version of Blackfriars, and, accordingly, formed a children’s company to act there. Its first production of the children’s company was John Marston’s The Malcontent (1603).
Blackfriars was lit entirely by candles except when shutters at the back of the audience were used to let some daylight in for daytime scenes. The Tom Patterson could be lit by candlelight if it did not contravene the fire code. Thus, Carroll’s lighting designer Kevin Fraser has had to use eight two-tier chandeliers with 22 electric candles each hoisted near the ceiling along with two two-tier standing candelabras with real candles to simulate the effect of Blackfriars. The problem is that the Patterson stage, unlike the Wanamaker, is so big that it cannot be lit by candlelight alone, so Fraser has to use regular stage lights that do not merely augment the candlelight but actually supply the vast majority of the light that illuminates the stage. The chandeliers and candelabra are thus merely toys.
At least, Carroll frankly admits that “Original Practices” is rot. In his Director’s Notes”, he states: “The game I call ‘Original Practices’ is one where I use whatever theatre-historical evidence seems interesting and suggestive to create a space where the actors and the audience can combine their imaginations. I have no idea if this is ‘how they would have done it’; I jut hope it creates a liberating environment for the play of Shakespeare’s incredible language”.
“Liberating” is rather a key word in Carroll’s statement since, except for moving the actors about from place to place, he seems to have let them free to do whatever they want. This means that Carroll’s production has no overriding theme or shape and that the actors, as in his Romeo and Twelfth Night, have been left to their own devices. Carroll’s uniform pacing makes the play dull and, with a few notable exceptions, the interpretation of the roles is either empty or bizarre.
The worst example, unfortunately, is Tom McCamus as King John. Perhaps because “madness” is the theme for this year’s Festival, McCamus has decided that John is mentally ill. From the very first scene he has John speak in soft tones until he abruptly bursts out shouting or he will stand absolutely still before he unaccountably starts running. These traits, we assume, along with his curling up on his throne or the floor are meant indicate that John is some kind of sociopath, even though history and the play provide no evidence for it.
In playing John this way, McCamus misses out on one of Shakespeare’s most common questions – one found in Macbeth and King Lear – asking how people come to do evil. In the play France views John as a usurper. According to the laws of succession, the English throne ought to have gone to Arthur, the son of John’s elder brother Geoffrey, whose widow Constance of Brittany was allied with France. John and Geoffrey’s brother, Richard I “The Lionheart”, however, has designated John as his heir thinking Arthur too young to rule. In 1202 during the wars between England and France, the English barons captured and imprisoned Arthur, who was then only 15. Shakespeare follows the chronicles that John wanted Arthur’s jailer Hubert to blind and murder Arthur. In 1203 Arthur disappeared.
As with Macbeth and Fleance or Richard III and the princes in the Tower, what Shakespeare is intrigued by is how the mind of an adult with power can come to fear a powerless child so much as to wish him dead. For John, as with Macbeth and Richard, this is a step into the abyss. But, if John is already mad as McCamus plays him, all interest in how John arrives at this fatal step is lost.
Another disappointment is Seana McKenna as Arthur’s mother Constance. This is the largest female role in the play and the character is complex. In much of the first part of the play, Constance is pleading for her son’s right to rule. But as others remark in the text, since Arthur is so young Constance would be regent and thus in pleading for Arthur is actually pleading for her own right to rule. In a good production of the play, such Robin Phillips’ at Stratford in 1998, an actor can suggest the ambiguity of Constance’s motives. McKenna conveys only motherly love and indignation at John’s usurpation and thus neglects the reality of Constance’ situation. After Arthur is captured, Shakespeare gives Constance a great scene in which she both fears going mad and welcomes madness as a relief from grief. All McKenna gives us is a glimpse of her technical virtuosity divorced from any feeling.
Luckily, other actors are more convincing. Graham Abbey plays Philip the Bastard, known as Faulconbridge, one of the more intriguing characters in Shakespeare’s history plays. The Bastard presents a parallel case to John’s and it is no surprise when the Bastard brings his case before John of who should inherit, him or his elder legitimate brother Robert (Daniel Brière) that John should rule in the Bastard’s favour. Shakespeare uses the character in an unusual way, having him enter the play from the outside only to take on the role of chorus and ironic commentator on the the acton. However, the more involved the Bastard becomes in supporting John, the more his role as outside commentator fades and he becomes more integrated into the action.
Abbey gives the best performance of the role I have seen. The clarity of his speech brings home all the barbs of his speech so that we see the action both as it unfolds and through his mocking point of view. As the Bastard comes to side with John, we see both John’s negative actions and the Bastard’s more sympathetic view of John as a fallible human being. Abbey makes the transition in moving from outside to inside the action beautifully. The sympathy his character shows John would work if only McCamus had not chosen his peculiar interpretation.
Wayne Best gives powerful performances both as the defiant Mayor of Angiers but especially as Hubert, the man appointed to guard and later kill Arthur. As Arthur, the young Noah Jalava speaks Shakespeare’s verse with more clarity and more feeling than some of the adults. Because of this, the strongest scene of the evening is that between Best as Hubert and Jalava as Arthur where Hubert, who has grown to care for the boy, must tell Arthur he intends to blind him while Arthur pleads that Hubert take mercy on him.
The rest of the cast is a jumbled mixture of strong and weak. Patricia Collins is strong as John’s mother Eleanor, otherwise known as Eleanor of Aquitaine, who vigorously defends her son. Jennifer Mogbock also gives a fine performance as Blanche of Spain, rightfully upset that she is merely being used as a bargaining chip between two countries. Sean Arbuckle makes an excellent Duke of Austria, lion skin draped over his shoulder, full of vanity and bluster. Brian Tree is an authoritative, uncompromising Cardinal Pandulph, although adding a bit more pomposity to his personality would not go amiss.
On the other side, Peter Hutt as Philip II of France speaks his lines in a most peculiar stop-and-start fashion, with pauses so long in the middle of phrases one starts to wonder if he’s trying to remember the rest. Antoine Yared, who plays Lewis the Dauphin of France, really should seek further voice training because the nasal, metallic sound he produces grates on the ear. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t convey much of the meaning of his lines and that his acting in general is so stiff.
King John is unusual among Shakespeare’s ten English history plays in not suggesting that the events of history are guided by Providence. Rather Shakespeare takes the point of view that he does in Romeo and Juliet, likely written the previous year, that history is really a series of accidents. John and Philip have a long debate with the Mayor of Angiers that finally resolves itself peacefully, only to have Pandulph arrive and excommunicate John and call on France to break off its support of him. John does wish Arthur dead, but Hubert relents and Arthur dies by accident in trying to escape from the Tower, thus causing John to be blamed for Arthur’s death anyway. John does not die in battle against France but rather, according to the anti-Catholic rumours of the day, from being poisoned by a monk.
Because of Shakespeare’s portrayal of history as accident, King John needs more of a strong guiding hand than other plays to be effective. It had that in Robin Phillips’ superlative production in 1998 starring Nicholas Pennell that proved that in the right hands this seldom seen play can be an absolutely gripping experience and a wonderful study of a mind tempted toward evil. Since then, neither Antoni Cimolino’s production in 2004 nor, even worse, Carroll’s production this season has been incisive enough to reveal the play’s virtues.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Graham Abey as the Bastard and Tom McCamus as King John; Seana McKenna as Constance, Antoine Yared as Lewis and Noah Jalava as Arthur. ©2014 David Hou.
For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.
2014-05-29
King John