SOURCE: Isaac, Dan. Review of King John. Back Stage 41, no. 6 (11 February 2000): 56.

In the following review, Isaac admires Karin Coonrod's “vibrantly alive” 2000 Theatre for a New Audience production of King John, noting its emphasis on the play's concerns with legitimacy and cynical politics.

Shakespeare's King John, generally thought to be a weak play about a weak embattled king, comes vibrantly alive in an imaginative production directed by Karin Coonrod and presented by Theatre for a New Audience.

The question of who has the right to inherit is introduced in the opening scene, when a French ambassador threatens war if King John (Ned Eisenberg) does not surrender his land to France and his throne to young Arthur, a legitimate claimant. Moments later, King John, sympathizing with a bastard who has lost his right to inherit his father's land, grants him the nobility of knighthood. Known only as the Bastard, this...