King John & Henry VIII (25 page)

Buzz Goodbody’s 1970 “Theatre-go-round” production, which toured schools and community centers around the country, as well as being performed at the RST, was a much simplified, pared-down version of the play. Goodbody took an extreme satirical line by presenting the main characters as shallow and childlike as they charge around the stage, frequently shifting their positions and allegiances, cheerfully indifferent to the carnage they are wreaking. Patrick Stewart’s John was, in particular, presented as a childish character taking an irresponsible, whooping glee in the political process. The Goodbody production received some support from contemporary reviewers, with Hilary Spurling in the
Spectator
, for example, arguing that the childlike presentation of the play and deliberate artificiality of the production revealed the futile nature of war and grand politics by likening them to the cruelty and recklessness of children’s games, a world in which entire battalions are cheerfully and “boisterously
slaughtered between one line and the next.”
³⁸
However, a number of contemporary reviewers suggested that the play owed as much to A. A. Milne (quoting Milne’s
Now We Are Six
poem about King John) as to W. Shakespeare. Benedict Nightingale, in the
New Statesman
, for example, suggested that Patrick Stewart’s John was “a sort of perverted Tigger” in a world in which “War is a hilarious trip to the seaside, and [the nobles] giggle and nudge one another as they prepare to knock down the sandcastles of Angiers. Push, kick, stamp, and then back home for tea.”
³⁹
Even more trenchantly, another influential reviewer argued that it was “a pity that this production of
King John
took place at all. Its flippancy was ill judged and often puerile. Buzz Goodbody … imposed on [the play] a single simplified view of politics as a dangerous game incompetently played by caricature kings and councillors who can give and take a giggle but defy respect.”
⁴⁰

3.
1970, Buzz Goodbody’s “Theatre-go-round” production. Patrick Stewart’s John was, in particular, presented as a childish character taking an irresponsible, whooping glee in the political process.

While Goodbody’s production was simplified and pared down, John Barton’s 1974 RSC production was largely rewritten and incorporated two other plays about King John. In the 1974 programme, Barton explained why:

Barton in fact also added lines of his own and cut and transposed Shakespeare’s text, as well as interpolating additions from the two other plays. In addition, in production he added a number of visual cues that were meant to illustrate and clarify the narrative. Barton also inserted a number of contemporary political references, including one to the high 1970s inflation rate (“… the price of goods / Soars meteor-like into the louring heavens / Whiles that our purses dwindle and decline”), although many of these were removed when the production transferred to London the following season, presumably in response to adverse reviewers’ comments. Indeed, Barton’s adaptation was generally not well received by the critics. Partly this was indignation at Barton’s perceived temerity in assuming he could improve on Shakespeare, with the
Observer
, for example, noting that “This year’s season at Stratford on Avon began on Wednesday with William Shakespeare’s
King John
. So, at least, declared the programme, thereby exposing the Royal Shakespeare Company not merely to criticism, but to possible prosecution under the Trades Descriptions Act.”
⁴¹
But even reviewers who were willing to entertain the adaptation did not generally applaud Barton’s work. Robert
Smallwood, for example, notes that while Barton was attempting to make the play more accessible to a modern audience, “the man who joins together what Shakespeare left asunder and attempts simultaneously to produce three plays is in serious danger of losing the individual focus of them all together in a general blur.”
⁴²
A similar criticism was made by Peter Thomson, who has varied praise for the individual performances but, in words reminiscent of Nightingale’s comments on Patrick Stewart’s interpretation of the same character in the Goodbody production, argues that Emrys James’s John was presented as a particularly annoying “nursery king, a mother’s boy without an inkling of adult responsibility.”
⁴³
The central political message of the Barton production, however, was that of a fatalistic decadence.

Following the generally adverse critical responses to the Goodbody and Barton productions, it is perhaps not surprising that the play was not attempted again at Stratford for nearly a decade and a half, when it was revived by Deborah Warner’s experimental but uncut production in 1988. Produced in the small and intimate, corrugated iron, boxlike space of the original Other Place, Warner’s production was—as she stated in interview with Geraldine Cousin—“wild, searching,” and “deliberately raw, big-brush stroke.”
⁴⁴
The first two weeks of rehearsals were spent in an ensemble exploration of the play in which the cast, as well as reading their own parts, were regularly asked to read other parts and to translate Shakespeare’s language into their own words. The eventual production used a sparse set, composed largely of a table, a few chairs, and several ladders, and the costumes were apparently improvised and of no particular period, leading at least one reviewer to note wryly that “some of the characters … look as if they have been dressed in a hurry by Oxfam,”
⁴⁵
while another commented more favorably that “The appearance is timeless-modern, the clothes spattered and well used, greatcoats thrown hastily over civilian trousers and City shirts as though the wearers had been surprised by sudden civil war.”
⁴⁶
The action was delivered at a fast rate, with characters moving on and off stage at high speed, and the production included live, circus-style music during the battle scenes, in order to suggest the farcical nature of politics and war.

Susan Engel, who played Constance, also suggested the modern political relevance of the play when she said in interview that she found natural the scene where Constance sits defiantly (Act 3 Scene 1) “because sitting is what you do when you protest, in Vietnam or in Westminster.”
⁴⁷

Nicholas Woodeson’s John appeared to be in the same satiric vein as Emrys James’s interpretation in the Barton adaptation, as well as Patrick Stewart’s John in the Goodbody version, with
The Times
, for example, describing him as “a jaunty tinpot monarch”
⁴⁸
whose insecurity is symbolized by the constant wearing of his crown chained to his waist. Perhaps the most controversial interpretation of the Warner production, however, was David Morrissey’s Bastard, which, far from the witty, “pickèd man of parts,” was presented as a loud and unpolished young man who appeared to react to events more with a naive spontaneity than “tickling commodity.” Critical reception for Morrissey’s Bastard was divided, with, on the one hand, Charles Osborne in the
Telegraph
opining that Morrissey “played noisily and often incomprehensibly,”
⁴⁹
and Paul Taylor in the
Independent
looking for the detachment of a manipulator and opportunist but finding “only the detachment of a football heckler,”
⁵⁰
and, on the other hand, Michael Coveney in the
Financial Times
describing him as “a ferociously talented and watchable newcomer.”
⁵¹

General critical reception of the production was also divided, with some commentators arguing that Warner’s “broad-brush” approach was too simplistic, although the overall balance was probably favorable, with several critics applauding Warner’s courage in taking on such a difficult play but producing it uncut and unadapted, and welcoming her honest exploration of the play—a view summed up in one review: “It has the distinctive look [Warner] has created of still having one foot in the rehearsal room.”
⁵²

After the Warner production, it again languished at Stratford for over a decade until 2001. Gregory Doran’s production certainly seemed to strike a resonant chord of national weariness with politicians and the political process, and was seen by a number of reviewers as “a corrosively satiric study of sordid power struggles.”
⁵³
This was partly achieved through comic undercutting of both situations and language. Doran signaled from the outset that having John’s late entrance repeatedly heralded by actual fanfares, reminiscent of—or perhaps even an allusion to—a scene from the Marx Brothers’ film
Duck Soup
muted the declamatory fanfare. While introducing a comic element, the conspicuously empty throne did immediately raise the central issue of who is legitimately and morally qualified to occupy it. When John—played by Guy Henry, better known for his seriocomic roles—did enter, his dignity already undercut by the late entrance, he was in a farcical hurry, rapidly pulling on his crown and lacking any royal bearing: a nervous, comic mode he retained throughout the play. It soon became clear, however, that this was a political satire. Indeed, both the production itself and the manner in which it was received and discussed seemed to be symptomatic of an underlying distrust of the political process and politicians that’s certainly not new in British society, but appeared to be particularly widespread in contemporary Britain at the turn of the twenty-first century. Thus, Charles Spencer, writing in the
Daily Telegraph
, noted:

4.
1988, Deborah Warner production. From left to right, Messenger (Julia Ford), The Bastard/Philip Falconbridge (David Morrissey), Arthur (Lyndon Davies). Perhaps the most controversial interpretation was David Morrissey’s Bastard, which, far from the witty, “pickèd man of parts,” was presented as a loud and unpolished young man who appeared to react to events more with naive spontaneity than “tickling commodity.”

Similarly, Michael Billington, in the
Guardian
, also related the play to modern political spin-doctoring:

While Doran’s production did succeed in making much of the high declamatory style palatable to a modern audience, effectively by sending it up, this was not without cost. Critics since Adrien Bonjour
⁵⁶
have noted the X-shaped or chiastic structure of the play: as John descends in regal and, more particularly, moral stature, so the Bastard rises. Indeed, for Bonjour, this balanced structure revealed the central theme of the play as personal integrity and supplied the unity other critics had suggested was lacking. In Doran’s production, however, John had little if any distance to fall since his dignity and,
by implication, his moral stature were low from the outset. The kingly imprecation of the text, “Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; / For ere thou canst report, I will be there: / The thunder of my cannon shall be heard” (1.1.24–26), was shouted offstage after Chatillon as John chased after the ambassador and hurled his crown at him. This tended both to disturb a satisfying and symbolic structural aspect of the play and to undermine both the Bastard’s moral rise and his role in the early part of the play as cynical debunker. “Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!”—the audience needed not a love child of Coeur-de-lion come from the country to tell them this: it was already patently obvious.