SOURCE: Brantley, Ben. Review of King John. New York Times (31 January 2000): E1.

In the following review, Brantley finds director Karin Coonrod's stylized and political interpretation of King John with the Theater for a New Audience well-realized, though somewhat lacking in “intricate characterization.”

The man in the front row, the one with the heavy black eyeliner, can't believe what he's seeing. Actually, he's a character in Karin Coonrod's lively new production of Shakespeare's King John, but he has decided to join the audience to get a clearer perspective on what's going on between the play's title monarch and the King of France It is, he has decided, a pretty disgusting spectacle.

All those rubber principles bending every whichaway, all that instant backtracking, all that compromise parading as conviction, this all comes as a shock to the fellow known as the Bastard, a virgin in the realm of government, played...