The Once and Future King Charles

King Charles III begins with the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, with the twelve-member cast actually singing the text of the Requiem mass. What follows is the story of Prince Charles finally ascending to the throne. Playwright Mike Bartlett has subtitled his extraordinary work “A Future History Play,” and while it is set in the very near future, it is also a kind of extension of the historical pageants of Shakespeare. For that reason, the cast speaks almost entirely in iambic pentameter — the alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables heard so often in Shakespeare’s work.  This turns out to be no gimmick at all: the story is told in very contemporary English, and the cast is so strong that you don’t really notice all the blank verse — except for when it occasionally rhymes. Or when it provokes howls of laughter. So when Prince Harry falls in love with a commoner who shows him how the other 99.9% really live, he comes back awestruck by the things he’s seen — including a visit to a Burger King, where, he says, in perfect rhythm — “I had a Whopper.”

Bartlett’s writing is shot through with humor, but the storyline is thought-provoking and surprisingly suspenseful. As King, Charles’s first duty is to put his purely ceremonial but, as it turns out, absolutely necessary signature on a new law that he doesn’t agree with. When he refuses, a series of cascading events threaten to rock Great Britain to its core. Tim Pigott-Smith is excellent as the new monarch who finds his conscience leads him to tear at the very fabric of the country he has waited his whole life to serve. The rest of the cast, many of whom play multiple roles, is splendid, as we watch the royal family, the Prime Minister, and the opposition leader all wrestle with the roles of tradition and freedom, of family and duty and conscience. And in the best Shakespearean tradition, there’s plenty of intrigue and backstabbing — not literal backstabbing, of course. This is the 21^st century, after all.  

There is also a ghost, whose identity you can probably guess.  

The play builds up to a coronation scene that was originally supposed to be a big party and has now become a fault line in British history. That scene too is an extended musical set piece, with composer Jocelyn Pook’s masterful blend of early and modern music.  

Like the best of Shakespeare’s works, King Charles III unfolds with a sense of inevitability that you don’t see until it’s over. How do they resolve this monarchic and constitutional crisis? We won’t spoil it, but let’s just say the smartest man in the room… is a woman.  

King Charles III is an astonishing achievement. It’s running now at the Music Box Theater.