Stratford Festival review: The King James Bible Play mirrors the enduring weight of language, past and present

From left: Cyrus Lane as Sir Henry Savile and Deborah Hay as Martie, The King James Bible Play. Stratford Festival 2026.

By: Galen Simmons

When it comes to writing something down and preserving a message for generations to come, language matters.

And when that message forms part of the most-read book in history, the Christian Bible, language matters even more.

In director Nina Lee Aquino’s production of playwright Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman’s The King James Bible Play, audiences are given a look at how the politics, lives and interpersonal relationships of the men (and their wives) who translated the King James Bible in the early 17th century continues to have influence on how we interpret the religious text and the world around us today.

The play is divided into two distinct parts that mirror each other in both the characters’ actions and the language they use to speak with one another.

In the first act, scholar Sir Henry Savile (Cyrus Lane) leads a team of fellow scholars and spiritual leaders representing the major branches of Christianity present in England in the early 17th century – John Bois (Gray Powell), George Abbot (Rylan Wilkie) and John Perrin (Michael Spencer-Davis) – along with Savile’s son, Willie (Steven Hao), serving as scribe, as they work slowly and methodically to translate a new version of the Bible, as ordered by King James I of England.

Though the original intent of the new biblical translation was meant to relieve tensions between the various Christian sects in England at the time by publishing a new version of the Bible free of political and religious bias, it becomes clear the men of the Second Oxford Company, as they were called, were equally as susceptible to the influences of their time, be it pressure from the king to avoid describing royalty as tyrants and to finish the translation quickly, or the translators’ petty squabbles and heartfelt discussions over events of the day and problems at home.

Set in Savile’s magnificent, 17th-century library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases broken only by a large, full-height window, as well as candles and a table at which the men do their work – however much work they actually get done – the first half of the play brings some much-needed humour to what would otherwise be dry and dreary work as each of the translators butt heads over specific words and how they could be interpreted by future generations.

In part two, the audience is brought to the modern-day set for a brand-new play inspired by the translation of the King James Bible. The library looks almost the same as it did in the first part, only the bookcases open to allow the actors to enter and depart the stage and there are modern-day tables, chairs, a laptop, a cellphone and a desk phone scattered about as members of the Broken Mirror Theatre Company refine and rehearse a new play by the company’s stressed-out leader, director and playwright, Martie (Deborah Hay).

As Martie tweaks and re-tweaks her play in the days and hours before opening night, unsatisfied with each version and under the pressure of the theatre company’s board of directors to make a profit, she and her daughter, a former actor and current biblical scholar named Han (Vivien Endicott-Douglas), battle over how to interpret both the linguistic changes and intentions of the men who translated the King James Bible so long ago.

While Han and her fellow actors – Anna (Angel Lo), Cath (Sara Topham) and Roni (Liz Der) – bring their own experiences and worldviews into their performances as Savile, Bois, Perrin, Abbot and Willie, as well as their wives who, no doubt, had influence on their husbands as they translated the text, history repeats itself, so to speak, and that enduring power of language and the written word echoes across the centuries.

While both parts of this play are equal parts humorous and heartfelt on their own, the cast and crew do a marvelous job stitching the two vastly separate periods in time together through the relationships between father and son and mother and daughter, how the translators and actors speak with one another, the outside influences that come to bear, and how the translators’ work and influence is depicted onstage alongside the actors of the Broken Mirror Theatre Company in the play’s second part.

The King James Bible Play runs at the Studio Theatre until Sept. 26.