The Player’s Advice to Shakespeare. David Warburton highlights the performative nature of his character with great emotion and much nobility!!
David Warburton as The Player. Photo by Andrew Alexander
This performance is a unique event in the annals of professional theatre in Ottawa. The original production of Brian K. Stewart’s play, also directed by John Koensgen, was received with such enormous enthusiasm by myself and my colleagues that the New Theatre of Ottawa won the Capital Critics’ Circle 2011-2012 prize for best actor, (Greg Kramer) best director (John Koensgen). Soon the company was making plans to bring the show to the Edinburgh festival, and in spite of the tragic death of Greg Kramer in Montreal, the plans have gone ahead. This is certainly what Kramer would have wanted if his spirit were watching over the New Ottawa Theatre at the moment and I am also sure that David Warburton, the actor who will be performing the role in Edinburgh would have had Kramer’s full support.
We saw a preview the other night of the show, the first time it has been seen by an audience and I was struck by the enormous authority that Warburton brings to the “Player”. Just to refresh your memory, this Shakespearean actor is languishing in prison, waiting for his fate to be sealed because he sympathized with the bloody Midland revolt (which broke out in 1607). This is the period following Queen Elizabeth’s death and the rise of Jacobean vengeance tragedies, traces of which are clearly in Stewart’s script, plus a reference he makes to Coriolanus which Shakespeare was writing at that period. .