'King John': Bard Fest dons one of Shakespeare's most uneasy crowns

King John in meltdown mode

If we heard his name in school, it was as the monarch from whom English nobles wrung a few limited rights in the Magna Carta, a document taken to be the narrow opening through which eventually poured the liberties our forebears came to enjoy as the foundation of modern democracy. Apart from that, his troubled reign could hardly count as a landmark in the progress of Western civilization. Nor does he figure as a human-rights hero.

King John represented the Plantagenet family that eventually lost the crown to the Tudors, to whose eminence through Queen Elizabeth I the playwright owed his success. As free an artist as we like to imagine Shakespeare to be, like most who rely on patronage he had to trim his sails accordingly. The Stuart line barely got to enjoy his genius first hand before he retired to Stratford and a relatively early death.

 "The Life and Death of King John" is thus one of the history plays in which a dim view of the royal past prevails. There's no fall mightier than that of a defeated dynasty. The play also offers audiences from its day to our own a withering perspective on the Catholic church and its power politics. And the work reminds us that, despite the 20th-century history of France and England as allies, there is a much longer history of rivalry and hostility between the two nations. In its twilight era, the French kingdom lent crucial help to Americans rebelling against the English crown. Et voilà!

 Indy Bard Fest is presenting the play with the pursed-lips title through next weekend at Shelton Auditorium of Butler University. That's the steeply raked room that was formerly the home of Edyvean Repertory Theatre at Christian Theological Seminary. The production has actor entrances down the aisles as well as from the wings. It gives you the sense of consequential actions happening before your eyes. Everything feels open to your examination. That helps make up for the fact that the work falls far short of masterpiece status. The goings-on deserve scrutiny, and they are presented with dedication and skill.

It's to the credit of the organization and director Doug Powers that the rarely seen play is given an outing here at all. And it merits one because there are many signs of the wit and pathos that Shakespeare was to develop in presenting stories in which his sympathies were more engaged than they seem to be here. The poetry is technically assured and at times strives toward the playwright's heights at the turn of the 17th century.

Shakespeare's insightful perspective, one that exceeds perhaps any other literary master, emerges through the particulars of a few of the characters.  A couple of them stand for types of people that Shakespeare came to present in ways that enabled him to flesh out his immortal gifts. One of them is the steel-hearted functionary who revels in the power of the institution he serves. Here it is the papal legate Cardinal Pandulph, charged with keeping the peace between restive Catholic kingdoms by the stern exercise of ultimate temporal and spiritual command. He is brilliantly played in this show by Matt Anderson. 

Another is a hellish version of the wronged woman, deprived of her entitlements and railing against those who have barred her family from its royal due. She is Duchess Constance, who is so indelibly enacted by Georgeanna Smith Wade that it's a shame the actor must later take on the brief secondary role of a mortally wounded French lord. (Such doubling of duties is inevitable when the dramatis personae are numerous but it's impractical to line up handfuls of other actors for minor roles. Here it's not always marked by enough vocal, costuming or makeup changes to be adequately distinctive.)

Philip the Bastard goes his own way.

What amounts to a major bursting out of Shakespeare's genius is the character of another wronged person, Philip the Bastard. His fortunes having been stamped by illegitimacy, he is compelled to forge his own identity. It's a severe one, and Shakespeare often presents him as a monologuist with a satirical turn of phrase and the determination to make his way unaided by much other than his nerve and intelligence. He is played with articulate ferocity by Taylor Cox, who manages to make the part more than  ceaseless ranting, tricked out in resentment.  He commands the stage whenever he is present, and the Bastard's true patriotism stands out in contrast to the title character and his nobles, who are self-serving even when they understandably turn on their sovereign.

King John is the kind of powerful person who flails helplessly, caught up in his own privilege and power but not deft in exercising them. All ages and places are familiar with this sort of inept, dangerous authority. On opening night, Zachariah Stonerock had a nuanced grasp of all aspects of the role. His King John tries to be a decisive commander-in-chief and antagonist to his French counterpart Philip, played with hints of nobility by Kevin Caraher. 

The two kings' protracted colloquy with the First Citizen of Angiers (Anderson's other role) is the play's closest thing to comic relief (outside of some of the Bastard's lines), as the kings are forced to deal with the recalcitrant French town as unwilling allies. 

But the title character is also a portrait of cruelty and desperation, traits that lead to his unlamented demise. The downfall is shown with sufficient evidence of his suffering, but that probably does little to arouse the viewer's sympathy for John, especially with the royal factotum Hubert's example of moral fortitude nearby; the role was stunningly played by Tony Armstrong. 

This oddly blank emotional effect of John's decline to my mind is no fault of  the actor's or the director's management of the material. It's simply a matter of how little Shakespeare's mastery of the mighty iambic-pentameter line he inherited from Christopher Marlowe can foretell the breaking of all categories and influences that Shakespeare was solely soon to achieve. His main practice for that achievement in "King John" is the unforgettable character of the Bastard.