Graham Abbey (left) as Philip, the Bastard and Tom McCamus as King John in King John.David Hou
King John was, as far as we know, the first of William Shakespeare's plays to be filmed, in 1899 – and you can still find the legendary Herbert Beerbohm Tree's silently ecstatic death spasms on YouTube today.
Between then and now, however, this lesser known, but engagingly cynical historical play seems to have stayed off the big screen, a cavity filled by the Stratford Festival's cinema release this week (April 9 and 12) of a live recording of last summer's production.
Director Tim Carroll's semi-traditional take rips along in its first half as a proto-Shavian satire of realpolitik: King John (Tom McCamus) and the pretenders to the throne, the English and the French and the Pope, all dress up their desire for power and land in lofty ideals.
Only Philip the Bastard, brilliantly played by Graham Abbey, sees through it all, sharing straight talk with the audience (who are on camera, too). The second act gets more serious, but it's difficult to care much about who lives and who dies, even little Prince Arthur (a sweet-faced Noah Jalava).
The Tom Patterson Theatre production, staged on a long catwalk, makes the transfer from 3-D to HD smoothly, though McCamus's cheekily theatrical performance feels more like flippant when flat. And yet, unlike Beerbohm Tree, you can actually hear him speak.
J. Kelly Nestruck