King John is the unloved orphan among Shakespeare's plays. Yet after years of neglect, a brace of Johns suddenly appears. Scooping the RSC by three weeks, Northern Broadsides offers a bold, exhilarating, percussive production, directed by Barrie Rutter and Conrad Nelson, that makes one boggle at our theatre's disdain for this engrossing chronicle.
What startles one is the play's modernity: it accords with our own scepticism about power politics. We see a cynical battle for the English throne between John, the de facto ruler, and the French king, who shamelessly uses John's nephew, Arthur, as a political pawn. The choric Bastard starts out as a bumptious opportunist who makes "Commodity", or naked self-interest, his god. And you could hardly have a more outrageous example of spin than the Bastard's belated attempt to terrify the French with the prospect of "warlike John" when the king lies desperately enfeebled. Even the character's famous, final vaunt - "This England never did, nor never shall, lie at the proud foot of a conqueror" - sounds a bit like William Hague at Harrogate.
But, far from being a patriotic battle-hymn, the play is, especially in the first half, a corrosively satiric study of sordid power struggles. And this production, played on a red-carpeted traverse stage, brings out excellently the mixture of bombast and expediency. Nothing is better than the scene where the English and French armies compete to win Angiers. Military might is evoked through fiercely pounded kettledrums. Yet beneath the percussive noise, you sense the conflict's essential squalor. John, desperate to keep his throne, sticks close to his militant mum for comfort. And the boy Arthur, whose claim the French endorse, is a quivering figure terrified out of his wits.
Admittedly, the second half is less cohesive. But, in addition to clarifying the zigzag fortunes of the rival parties, both directors contribute strong performances of their own. Nelson as the Bastard not only drums like Buddy Rich but even makes sense of the character's transition from acerbic commentator to national icon. And Rutter lends the papal legate, Pandulph, a sinister sophistry as he persuades the Dauphin that defeat is a kind of victory.
There are even greater depths of insecurity in the vacillating John than those yet discovered by the eccentrically named Fine Time Fontayne. But there is a splendidly troubled Hubert from Gerard McDermott, and Marie Louise O'Donnell as Constance hits exactly the right note of raging egotism when she cries, after the betrayal of her son Arthur, "What becomes of me ?" Self constantly rules in this satiric history; and, in both relishing and subverting its rhetoric, Northern Broadsides makes an overwhelming case for its theatrical restoration.
At the Viaduct, Halifax (01422 255266), until Saturday, then touring until late June.
