King John

For KING JOHN, Director Kimberly Gaughan has assembled eight of Boston’s most compelling actors to bring this slippery, sardonic yet ultimately thrilling play to life.

KING JOHN is subversive with its strikingly skeptical vision of history and how identities of nation are formed. Shakespeare dramatizes the capricious relationship between intention and outcome as personal umbrages jostle international politics. Great men create great messes. Intelligent, iron-willed women adeptly clean things up. In depicting the fickle, vainglorious, and hair-triggered nature of those who ascend to power in this world— KING JOHN, though neglected, is play for right now.

This is a play that blows itself up a few times over the course of its run-time. Expectations of structure and genre are rendered incoherent. Battles are not triumphant, but rather, ill-conceived disasters. The oaths of the play’s putative heroes are consistently repudiated. The demands of leaders, diplomatic and religious, are motivated by the performance of subjugation rather than loyalty or faith. The moments of true honor and heroism come from those who resist inhumane orders and blind allegiance. A timely play, indeed.