It isn’t easy being king.
It’s fraught with empty ceremonies, repressed emotions, betrayals, powerlessness and heavy loneliness.
And it all comes beautifully, painfully alive in Arizona Theatre Company’s production of Mike Bartlett’s “King Charles III.”
This production, this play, underscores why it was so necessary for Arizonans to rally around ATC, infusing it with the funds it needed to launch its 50th season.
And what a launch.
“King Charles III” opens with the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Punks with tattoos, spiked hair and snarly ‘tudes are gathered around a picture of the queen, her coffin in the background. A mournful, graceful recording of the Beatles’ “Because (The World is Round)” fills the theater.
Next, we see Camilla and Charles, who is at long last king.
She praises him for his stiff upper lip during the funeral service.
“Please don’t,” he says. “It’s simply what I had to do. We’ll find no dignity in cov’ring up the way we feel.”
This is a king we rarely see: pained with the loss of his parents, and the weight of what is now on his shoulders carved into his face.
The play takes off when the prime minister presents Charles with a bill restricting freedom of the press. It’s passed the house and only needs the king’s signature — a formality, as the signature really carries no power.
But Charles knows that while the press can be mighty pesky, too intrusive, it is essential to democracy. He won’t sign it.
Thus begins the tragic downfall of a king who longs to be a ruler who is wise and good, but has no idea how to do that.
The play takes us on a journey that is rich with comedy, and even richer with human frailties, corruption, manipulations. It’s an homage to Shakespeare not just in the way it was written — in blank verse — but in the way it forces us to reflect on what it says about human nature.
Peter Van Norden gives us a Charles that we can easily embrace, cheer, and feel deeply saddened by. He makes palpable the turmoil that his refusal to sign that bill causes him. And as we see him follow that refusal with a single-minded focus to bend the government’s will to his way of thinking, we are horrified and disturbed by what he is willing to do to achieve a noble end: preserving a basic tenet of democracy.
This play vibrates with moral conundrums. It’s packed with surprises. And the likelihood is high that you will walk out of the theater and mull it over, discuss it, and relish the memory of seeing it.
Matt August directs with wit and a sense of urgency. While we may not care about the royal family, August makes it impossible not to care about these people, or the very real human emotions and important ideas this play shines a light on.
Van Norden is riveting in his Lear-like portrayal, but he does not bring this piece to such vibrant life on his own. The whole cast makes music of the language and breathes full, complex life into the characters.
Particularly striking are Kate Maher Hyland as Princess Kate, a Lady Macbeth character who at first charms and ultimately destroys; Adam Haas Hunter as the conflicted William, who is pulled between loyalty to his father and his nation; Dylan Saunders, who gives us a Prince Harry who longs for a life free of royal trappings, and Jeanne Syquia, who plays Harry’s love interest, Jess, with a toughness mixed with a touching vulnerability.
ATC’s “King Charles III” is a play worth seeing. And then seeing again
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