Summary 
Outdoor production depicts the political conflict and condemnation of commodity in a post-apocalyptic time. The childish King is an unethical egotist supported by the bastard Faulconbridge against the French in bold stage visuals.
Design
Directed by Calvin MacLean. Costumes by Barbara Pope. Set by Ron Keller. Lights by J.William Ruyle. Sound by Roderick Peeples.
Cast
Thomas Anthony Quinn (King John), David Kortemeier (King Philip), Zachary Fischer (Lewis), Roderick Peeples (Hubert), Jimmie Galaites (Philip Faulconbridge), Harris Smith (Limoges), Jack McLaughlin-Gray (Cardinal Pandulph), Tandy Cronyn (Eleanor), Rebecca MacLean (Constance), Kathleen Logelin (Blanche).
Analysis
The opening night performance of the Illinois Shakespeare's Festival's King John begins in twilight and concludes beneath a full moon. Festival actors battle wind, insects, and noise from traffic and overhead airplanes in their newly constructed theater. Director Calvin MacLean modernizes the eleventh-century King John to an ambiguous but modern post-apocalyptic time. Scrap metal dominates the set, welded in patchwork pieces with mismatched chain-link and wire mesh to form battered walls. Iron ladders with crooked rungs lead to a broad lower gallery then up to a narrow upper gallery high above the silver and gray stage.
The medieval characters wear modern clothing. Soldiers wield knives and lead pipes, and wear cargo pants and T-shirts, bandanas and kerchiefs, and cornrows and goatees, while their leaders sport suede and black leather, and the politicians khakis and dress shirts. The young and modern costuming supports Shakespeare's themes, with political and personal pragmatism - "commodity" - revealed as not just medieval but post-modern, indeed an "ancient tale, new told."
The English faction is adorned in shades of brown, with King John in tan pants and jacket with a chocolate shirt, and Eleanor of Aquitaine in a dark brown collared suit with a cream blouse. Not only do mother and son behave as emotional opposites, they physically appear like photographic negatives of one another. The French wear shades of dark blue, with more refined clothing than that of the English. Both King Philip and Arthur wear navy double-breasted suits with ties and slicked-back hair.
A martial musical score and thundering sound effects enhance the production's powder keg of political conflicts. Dramatic music accompanies the 2.1 French invasion of Angiers, as a rush of soldiers assault the stage with ladders, scurrying from level to level to confrontations with dagger-armed Englishmen. In the production's most striking sequence, the 3.1 clash between the French and English is played within pulsating red light - the sun is o'ercast in blood" - and amid pipe against pipe noises, drumbeats and rhythmic shouts, the scene looks and sounds like a rendition of Stomp as a gang-banger street fight.
The "bastard" Philip Faulconbridge is played as ideologically unique, and his attire is distinctive: his blue jeans of 1.1 become camouflage and fatigues for the 3.1 battles and finally black leather for the concluding scenes. The Bastard wryly comments on the "mad world, mad kings" as he squats spot-lit atop a ladder in the gallery, looking down with disgust at the 2.1 marriage "peace" being made onstage, or when he leans against a wall with arms folded in disdain over the 3.1 deliberations.
MacLean illuminates the Bastard's disregard for commodity with the Knight's casual center stage 2.1 solution to tear the "contemptuous city" of Angiers to the ground. Later, during his rage over the 4.3 death of young Arthur, the Bastard mauls a French standard bearer, then pulls the flowing blue French heraldic banner from its upper-gallery moorings.
MacLean focuses the production on the craven vainglory of its title character. Thomas Anthony Quinn's spluttering King John, a wide-eyed, humorless narcissist, almost always sneers, shouts, or pouts. He gives a foot-stomping temper tantrum at the claim against his "borrowed majesty," and his vow of the "trumpet of our wrath" against the French is all arm-waving bluster. Quinn's John barks commands but physically recoils, as if he fears any response, and he hits Shakespeare's couplets like punch lines. Quinn sputters over the word "Pope," and spits at the 3.1 declaration of him as "arch-heretic" and "excommunicate." Quinn provides John with interesting complexity: his King is not so much a coward and a weakling as he is an unethical egotist.
The "cankered grandam" Eleanor is played as a mean-spirited puppeteer. Bent with age and wild-eyed, wearing closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, she slaps Constance across the face during the "bleed, France" negotiations, and she silently directs her son when the timorous King falters or says something of which she disapproves.
A variety of scenes illustrate King John's lack of character. Temporarily victorious, he intimates a murder of Arthur in 3.2, lit in red light and huddled with Hubert beneath six spears that jut overhead from the gallery. As he speaks, soldiers trudge onstage with battlefield corpses draped over their shoulders, and they pile bodies atop the fallen Blanche at center stage. One soldier carries a gasoline can with which he splashes the bodies, and the pile "ignites" in a scarlet glow that panics the suddenly sorrowful John, who postpones his homicidal plot. To conclude the first act, the King scrambles into the heap of burning bodies, digging for his niece, and when he finds Blanche, he embraces her and cries out.
As his kingdom disintegrates during the second act, Quinn's panicky John descends toward childish collapse. Blaming Hubert in 4.2 for the murder he requested in writing, the King snatches the paper from the man, tears it in two, and tosses it into the air, only to scramble after the scraps a moment later and stuff the evidence into his pockets. When told his mother has died, he collapses backward into his throne in a red glare of light, then scurries off stage with such alacrity that his crown falls free and he must return to fetch it. Also, John makes his 5.1 surrender of his crown to Pandulph by hurling it down at the Cardinal from the gallery, and MacLean stages the King's earlier 3.1 debate with Philip as a slow-motion playground tug-of-war, with John and the Bastard grasping the Frenchman's hand as Constance and the Cardinal pull him in the opposite direction.
MacLean's bold sense of theatricality is evidenced in several scenes. In 2.1, an every-man citizen of Angiers - wearing vest, hat, neck kerchief, and work shirt with sleeves rolled up - witnesses the combat between the sides waging war over his town. He watches through binoculars from the gallery, but with casual self-importance eats a sandwich and drinks a glass of wine while rolling his eyes or pointing a finger at offstage violence. Blanche's 3.1 lament at being beholden to both sides in an impending war receives striking emphasis when a large banner falls from the gallery to drape around her, so she is literally as well as figuratively trapped. In 3.3, the grieving Constance wanders the stage barefoot in a white nightgown, hugging a bolt of satin and weeping like Ophelia gone mad. And Arthur's 4.3 fall from a castle wall is a backward plunge from a ladder into the arms of a group of men dressed in black, who then carry his body ceremoniously across the stage.
The climactic battle scenes begin when a flash pot explodes with shocking volume at center stage, and the Dauphin and the Bastard race up ladders on opposite sides of the set. Amid throbbing music and lit in red, a single combat is joined by a dozen warriors, and fallen bodies litter the stage. The poisoned King John is brought to the stage for 5.7, strapped to a ladder that is propped against the gallery. As he raves and struggles, the extent of his guilt is shown as slain characters reappear above him. The ghostly dead stare with accusatory expressions from the lower gallery - Arthur, Constance, and Blanche - and high in the upper gallery, Eleanor and Pandulph silently watch as King John spasms and dies. In the sound effect of a rising wind, the battlefield dead rise and the characters above look into the audience as the Bastard delivers his closing speech of loyalty to Henry III.
Elevated by MacLean's bold visuals and Quinn's complex portrayal of the title role, this modernized King John proves a timely production of a difficult play.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.18, No.3, Summer 2000.