'King John' almost a fine Bard-eaux wine

The Stratford Festival's production of William Shakespeare's “The Life and Death of King John” (shortened to a marquee-friendly “King John”) constitutes less a work of cinema than something akin to a television sitcom or music concert, with 10 high-def cameras and 128 soundtracks capturing events upon a no-frills stage before a live audience in Canada's Tom Patterson Theatre.

'Tis a mixed-media bag.

The politely appreciative onlookers on the risers constantly remind us we're in a big theater with a stage boldly thrust down the middle. So to be swept away by the play — as we would more easily be witnessing this event live — becomes more of a challenge.

On the other gauntlet, documentary filmmaker and director Barry Avich's omnipresent cameras give us better than front-row seats with well-paced edits (no editor is credited in production notes) providing wide-shots and close-ups as needed.

Stratford Festival's March offering “King Lear” placed the audience in shadows, making our suspension of disbelieve all the more willing.

This would not work in “King John,” originally directed for the stage by Tim Carrol, for this production finds much merry mirth in Shakespeare's tragic history, not only in rapier exchanges of verses, but in its willingness to break the fourth wall. (Graham Abbey's the Bastard nonchalantly drops the Duke of Austria's severed head into a viewer's lap. He is surprised.)

The story tells of the reign of King John (Tom McCamus, pumping his delivery with caffeine), a period raging with lethal political squabbles, a smackdown with the Pope's Cardinal Pandulph (Brian Tree, a Bard rock star) and the old dilemma between executing political necessity and preserving one's humanity.

Abbey's Bastard (think of him as a more forcefully confident Jeff Daniels) shares King John's sense of nationalism and royal supremacy, both challenged when a French ambassador (E.B. Smith) demands John give up his throne to his much younger and politically weaker nephew Arthur (Noan Jalava), or face the threat of war.

The cast of “King John” does not count consistency as a quality. The accents flit between English elegance and American flatness.

Some performers, such as Patricia Collins' cruel Queen Elinor, spit the Bard's poetry with aplomb; others. such as Jennifer Mogbock's Blanche of Spain, seem relieved simply to wade through the text without fault or error.Purists might take umbrage that “King John,” like its title, has been slightly shortened to concise effect. As the Bastard says to Salisbury, “Let it be so.”