King John

Shakespeare’s history play about the troubled John ‘Magna Carta guy’ Lackland is one of his deepest cuts, little performed thanks to its odd mix of pageantry, convoluted politicking, and a subject who simply isn’t very famous these days (conversely the Victorians staged it a lot because they loved all those things). The Globe has only tackled it once before in the modern era and this production will be its Wanamaker debut. It’ll also be the Globe debut for its director Jaz Woodcock-Smith, whose history of imaginitive lo-fi productions suggests a quirky approach to all the royal pomp notionally baked into the play.