Eleanor Rhode offers up a vibrantly contemporary production of King John for the RSC, with a striking lead performance from Rosie Sheehy
“Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!”
You wouldn’t normally turn to King John for an eye-openingly modern piece of Shakespeare but this 2019 RSC production really seems to buck the trend. Vibrantly directed by Eleanor Rhode with some superb design work from Max Johns, it’s ostensibly set somewhere in the mid-20th century, powerful parallels emerge with the vagaries of our contemporary administration.
Rosie Sheehy is a vivid presence as the titular monarch, full of artifice in her public persona but unable to stop a full moral disintegration eating away from within. And Charlotte Randle is awesome as Constance, the King’s sister-in-law and mother to a rival pretender to the throne. pushing home the personal costs of a cut-throat political system that takes no prisoners in any of its battles.
