"Will Somers: Keeping Your Head. The Most Challenging Performance Yet.
Photo: McGihon /Postmedia Pierre Brault.
The title of this extraordinarily dense and multiple-voiced monologue reveals the macabre sense of humour underlying Pierre Brault’s text. Brault incarnates the Jester at the court of Henry VIII who by some miracle managed to keep his head during the whole reign of the monstrous monarch. “I make him laugh” replied Somers when asked how he survived all those years.
In fact, his saucy, subversive, sense of fun and which allowed him to trespass boundaries no one else could, transforms this character into a fascinating stage persona who spent his whole life performing and manoeuvering within the complex politics of the English court. Brault transforms his character into a slippery narrator with quick witted double entendres and word plays, winks and jokes that go zipping by and almost evaporate if you don’t pay close attention. He is also the conscious performer commenting both on the acting process and the role of the audience .