King John
2015: Barry Avrich

This is the production from the 2015 Stratford Festival (Canada), and, like the rest of their offerings, it is filmed from a live production on a deep thrust stage, with virtually no backdrops or scenery of any sort. Like most of their other productions, too, it highlights Shakespeare's words and ideas without putting them through some arbitrary transformational filter or wresting them out of all proportion with their material. It is meticulously filmed, with excellent costumes, and it is a genuinely beautiful piece of work itself — but the emphasis is on solid storytelling using Shakespeare’s text and ideas, and that's where its central impetus lies.

Many of the players are veterans of other Stratford productions; they bring their considerable powers to their roles in a genuinely collaborative way, never seeking for a disproportionate star turn. The result is a genuine and illuminating presentation of the play without high-concept add-ons (one might compare the recent version for the Royal Shakespeare Company, in which John — an aging man — is played by a young woman for reasons that defy easy analysis.)

All in all, it is hard to call attention to a single standout feature from the play, though (as in some other versions) the role of Philip the Bastard is deserving of note: it is subtly played and quite entertaining to watch; at the same time, it's subordinated to the larger purpose. I can heartily commend this version for a first encounter with the play or as a way of revisiting it without having to endure the self-regarding cleverness that seems to have taken over at the RSC.

Buy King John on streaming video from Amazon.