Summary 
Insightful modernization of the thirteenth-century history play, shedding light on the timeless nature of commodity in its form as power politics with personal agendas, lust for control, and questionable alliances. Superb character study of the titular English King and his controlling mother, as well as Constance, the Bastard, and the King of France. Staged as a contemporary political election, with campaigning, a fierce debate, and a scrolling news ticker. Powerful entertainment.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Alexander Dodge. Costumes by Mariann Verheyen. Lights by Robert Wierzel. Sound by David Van Tiegham. Compositions by Alaric Jans.
Cast
Greg Vinkler (King John), Linda Kimbrough (Queen Eleanor), Timothy Edward Kane (Philip Faulconbridge), James Fitzgerald (Lewis), Zachary Gray (Arthur), David Perkovich (King of Austria), Lisa Dodson (Constance), David Lively (King Philip), Cassandra Bissell (Blanche), Roger Mueller (Salisbury), John Reeger (Pandulph), Aaron Cedolia (Henry).
Analysis
Barbara Gaines' production of King John is decidedly different than her 1991 success at the Ruth Page Theatre. This version still focuses on power politics and slippery alliances, but is modernized to contemporary Europe with an emphasis on the political manipulation of public opinion and the launching of a bloody war to obfuscate a tenuous claim to power. The lust for authority and social insensitivity amid a political game of grand strategy and brokering is timeless, as endemic in the thirteenth century as in the twenty-first.
The staging brims with election-year decoration: red and white runners across the stage, campaign posters above the proscenium arch, a large poster of candidate John's smiling face ("King John for England!") in silhouetted black-and-white, red-white-and-blue flyers and handbills and posters. A Union Jack and French tri-colors are suspended upstage, and podiums stand opposite each other for a political debate. Most impressively, a scrolling news ticker provides plot snippets, news reports, and political commentary overhead, lending the production a stock-exchange, political-rally immediacy.
The production begins with a security detail in dark suits, sunglasses and earphones skulking around the stage to ensure it's safety before King John and Eleanor of Aquitaine enter to amplified canned applause, waving and smiling with affected cheerfulness like any modern political candidate joined by his mother at a rally. 2.1 plays as a televised debate during a political campaign, with John and the King of France debating before a fully lit house, the audience taking the part of the citizens of Angiers. Gaines cleverly intercuts the two Kings' speeches into a rapid-fire dialogue that mesmerizes.
Gaines directs Greg Vinkler - reprising his 1991 performance - as a King John that is a cardboard figurehead, a puppet to his marionette mother, but conceited enough to believe he stands on his own merit. Something of a poser, he struts in a yellow-braided, double-breasted naval uniform. Vinkler's John is a fascinating mess of contradictions: a weakling in position to play a bully, an educated aristocrat lacking intelligence and nobility, a petulant and overly cocky optimist who quickly turns to his mother when events move against him. Almost constantly smirking, shifting his eyes, and wringing his hands, John acts at the direction of Eleanor, who is played with a regal iron will that barely conceals a controlling cruelty beneath. The power behind the throne, Eleanor poses stiffly, tightly controlled and obviously arrogant, a heartless string-puller in a crimson gown and curly short-haired wig.
In a similar role as a driven mother, Constance is depicted as emotionally opposite the reptilian Eleanor, passionate and manic in her reactions to the back-stabbing and maneuvering for political position going on around her and her son, Arthur. During the rally and debate, she moves quickly in and among the attendees, coyly dallying with the King of Austria and whispering vitriol into the Queen Mother's ear. Quite unlike Eleanor, Constance cracks under the pressure and is betrayed by her few allies, descending nearly into madness. During the second act-opening scenes, she is revealed as a political non-entity - a heavy sweater awkwardly over her evening gown - wearying Cardinal Pandulph, King Philip, and Lewis, who sit at a glass table in plastic chairs, sipping red wine and trying to ignore her.
Other supporting roles are similarly accomplished and dramatically effective. The Bastard Faulconbridge - a cynical outsider in a black leather jacket, worlds apart from his bespectacled brother Robert in his business suit - is sarcastic and distrustful, frequently commenting in asides on the machinations ("commodity") so prevalent in the political power struggle. Something of an energetic man of action, his character arcs from disgust to opportunism and involvement, then down to disillusion: when Arthur dies, the Bastard throws the murderer to the ground, nearly strangles him, then burns the Union Jack. He rises again, shrewd and tough - the antithesis to King John - learning lessons along the way, adapting but not selling out, and he emerges the sole political survivor, a spokesman on behalf of a soon-to-be-crowned King. In contrast, the craven King of France - foppish and self-conscious - is torn between alliances: in a particularly telling scene, John grasps one of the French King's hands and Cardinal Pandulph the other, and together they desperately pull the King in a nearly comic tug-of-war. Once confronted with papal disfavor, however, the French King capitulates to Pandulph and leaves the management of war to Lewis.
Gaines wisely focuses on the emotional struggles within the political turmoil, concentrating on astute character study rather than a historical chronicle. There is ample martial music and a parade of medaled British naval and French army costumes, but the conflicts and battles all take place offstage. The tenuous alliances, political vendettas, and self-interested leadership recall both pre-World War One Europe as well as 1990s Russia, with civil unrest rampant and citizens clinging to narrow niches of politics. Vinkler's King John disintegrates beneath the pressure, much like Constance, but without the emotional strength: he is a coward speaking brave words. In the second Act Vinkler's John loses his smirk and all semblance of confidence, and with the rightful heir dead under suspicious circumstances - the overhead news ticker reads, "What was he thinking?" - he squirms and fidgets and hems and haws, trying desperately to evade blame. John's array of campaign posters are defaced by the populace and spray-painted graffiti on the walls reads "boy killer" and "abdicate now."
In a bravura finale, John slides toward madness, collapsing between electrical towers that hum, spark, and crackle as the sounds of battle rage in the distance. The news ticker reports "Regime on the brink!" and John returns in a stumble to the stage in a thin white hospital gown, an intravenous tube trailing behind him before he collapses again - and expires - in Henry's arms. As the King is carried away on a stretcher past a barbed wire fence, the Bastard removes the royal signet ring and presents it with sincere loyalty to Henry. The cast exits, but a sullen janitor returns with a broom, and he strips a campaign poster with John's now ironic smile from a stage wall, replacing it with a portrait of Henry, and the lights slowly fade.
Gaines' second attempt at directing King John is a triumph in its modernized examination of political power structure and the human beings forging dubious alliances within the machine, strikingly presented - with stage pictures such as young Arthur's body being covered with a Union Jack, as well as with wigs, make-up and elaborate costuming - intelligently edited and sharply focused.