Of equal dramatic importance to the eponymous monarch in this lesser-known history play is the character named Philip Faulconbridge but known for the most part simply as the Bastard; early in the play he is acknowledged as the natural son of Richard the Lionheart and thus John’s nephew, and he is the only sympathetic bastard in all of Shakespeare. In this production he is also female. I had expected to find this irksomely at odds with the world of the play, but in Maria Aberg’s production it is not. Aberg sets the action in an unspecific late-20th-century retro environment. King John wears a service greatcoat and biker boots; the King of France is resplendent in a powder-blue polyester safari suit. When these opponents are reconciled by a dynastic marriage, the two courts cut loose to “Say A Little Prayer” and “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life”.
    
This may, and in my view does, create more and bigger problems than it solves. There are conceptually clever touches such as flooding the stage with balloons and confetti after the interval (a notice as we enter wryly warns “This production contains loud noises, smoke effects and latex balloons”), suggesting the mess after the party that needs to be cleaned up, i.e. an England in chaos following John’s dispute with the Pope. (The papal legate Pandulph is also female, though I defy anyone to question the propriety of the wonderful Paola Dionisotti.) However, the overall effect is to trivialise the entire story. Since this is already uncertain in tone – John is neither a good nor a bad king, nor is he brought down by a single tragic flaw – Aberg’s staging exacerbates the uncertainty when what it needs is clarification.
    
Alex Waldmann (who is finally getting the chance to give weighty performances after too long an apprenticeship) and Pippa Nixon bring a sexual charge to the relationship between the king and the Bastard; in one scene they give off a distinctly Macbethian vibe, leading me to wonder whether I would not have preferred to see them play that couple rather than this factitious one. It is a decade since the last King John, so one cannot, if interested, afford to pass up an opportunity to see the play; this, though, is a production that begs the questions it poses rather than tackling them.

Written for the Financial Times.