Plots

First of all, I have apparently been making a mistake by buying pointy-toed shoes in the same size I buy my regular shoes. You buy 'em bigger, they're not uncomfortable. Or so several readers have assured me. They still look painful.

On to "King John." It was ... different. At 6:45 last night, police shot a man on Boston Common whom they believed to be brandishing a gun. So when I got to St. Paul's Church, where the play is being held, every cop in Boston was there and the Common was labyrinthed with police tape. It set an uneasy tone for a play that's about killing, betrayal, and the illegitimate use of force. (At the time of this writing the man has been taken to the hospital, his wound is non-fatal, and what actually happened no one seems to know yet.)

The play is being held in the basement of St. Paul's Cathedral, and if you went up the main stairs, you were confronted with a sign reading: "Are you here to WORSHIP? [Directions.] Are you here to SEE KING JOHN? [Directions.]" Mildly amusing given my recent post about theater as my sacred space. Worship/watch Shakespeare; that's more of a both/and than an either/or in my spiritual life. Somebody notify the diocese.

The play ... worked. Yes, it did. It wasn't ASP at their very best, but it's not Shakespeare at his very best, either, so you can't really blame them for that. It was understandable, and that's saying a lot. They weren't setting it in modern-day L.A., as it turned out, that was my mistake; but the actors were in modern dress, rather than a vague collection of tunics and leggings and chiffon wisps and armor meant more to evoke the character than a specific time and place.

In a funny way, this production was what American Repertory Theatre's "Julius Caesar" should have been. About that show, I wrote:

I'm a big fan of high-quality, mixed-genre television serials like "Six Feet Under," "The Riches," "The Sopranos," "Dexter," "Battlestar Galactica," "Lost," "Oz," and the like, and for a while there, it felt as though the director was taking a cue from these sorts of shows, with their intense, more-than-naturalistic psychologism, moody music and saturated colors, dark humor, conflicting moral structures, sudden shocking violence, casual drug and alcohol use, upshoots of magical realism, and the constant running themes of how the politics of domestic and public life intertwine.

That's the cue Ben Evett was taking, and unlike the ART director, he pulled it off.

Thomas Garvey at Hub Review thinks that everyone was cast in the wrong role. He's seen two other productions of KJ, so he has a distinct advantage over me, and he might be right. Unlike Mr. Garvey, I liked Michael Forden Walker as King John--he got notably better as the play went on, but that could be due to the script giving him increasingly more to do. The role of Hubert, written as an avuncular old chap, was played instead by the very attractive Sarah Newhouse. The gender switch worked; John is so besotted by his mother that in her absence he'll almost literally attach himself to the breast of any parental figure who comes around, so the language between him and Hubert was always a bit overheated. It worked to go ahead and make it a romantically charged relationship, and Ms. Newhouse and Mr. Walker had excellent chemistry. (ASP always does sexual chemistry well; I'd love to be invited to their cast parties.) I didn't buy the scene in which Hubert nearly tortures a young boy--a competitor for John's throne--to death, but I didn't buy it when I read it, and I wouldn't buy it if it were being played by a nice old man, either. Again, ASP 1, Shakespeare a big wooden O.

Jennie Israel played Constance, the widowed mother of the young boy almost tortured to death, and ... well, it's not her fault. The production was done as a cross between "The West Wing" and "The Sopranos," and Constance basically is Janice Soprano with far more to be angry about, and Ms. Israel bears a slight resemblance to Aida Turturro, with the result that I wanted to see Ms. Turturro in the role, reprising Janice "Parvati Wasatch" Soprano Bacala. I couldn't get past it, and I couldn't get past wanting to see Glenn Close as Eleanor of Aquitaine, either. There seemed in general to be a lot of vague pop-culture resonances with the characters--a whiff of Guido Sarducci in Cardinal Pandulph, a touch of Hans-und-Franz in the Austrian king, Dutch Wagenbach in King John. Intentional? Or does it reflect a certain blankness to the play itself, which my mind naturally filled with its own detritus?

Bill Barclay, as the Bastard, didn't leave room for any other references at all. Harold Bloom calls the Bastard Shakespeare's first fully human character, and while I think Bloom is wrong about damn near everything (how can you, with any good faith whatsoever, simultaneously claim that "The Merchant of Venice" is inarguably anti-Semitic and that "The Taming of the Shrew" is not sexist?)--but he's got that right. An archaic term for children born out of wedlock--besides "bastard"--is "natural child," and that's what the Bastard is. In a world of posers, plotters, players, he is simply and gloriously himself. While all the actors were remarkably clear and comprehensible, Mr. Barclay took the naturalism in an entirely new, and often very funny, direction.

So there. All week I've been looking forward to what my favorite Shakespeare company would do with a near-impossible play, and now I know and am basically pleased with it. And of course, as a result of seeing the play tonight, Mr. Improbable and I missed the season finale of "Lost" and get to watch it tomorrow!

Ah, plots.