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. .
At that moment, the landed aristocracy decided to close off the part of their vast land holdings that had always been common land. The idea was to create pasture for raising sheep. The result was that people living on those open lands were forced out of their homes, condemned to poverty, misery and even death. Demonstrations against this situation turned into angry rebellion and James I’s deputies became responsible for the mutilation and killing of masses of people.
The essence of the actor’s narrative is a description of those events, in which he himself participated, but it also becomes a critique of Shakespeare’s writing which, according to our player, reveals a shocking discovery! The Bard, in spite of his constant representation of common people in his plays, never really liked the masses and was always bending to authority. In fact, says the player, Shakespeare equated the common people with the Roman mob, an undefinable riff raff.
As Jamie Portman explained however, “in fairness, there remains a broader canvas in which Shakespeare and his attitudes can better be understood. He was a product of a particular culture, what historian E.M.W. Tillyard once called the “Elizabethan world picture” and he was genuine in his fear and abhorrence of a universe rent asunder by disorder. The need for order recurs again and again in the great plays — Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, Richard lll. Julius Caesar the Tempest — and even in the comedies. And he was always concerned about the misuse of power in high places. True, he protected his own position from potentially fatal regal wrath by expressing these concerns within the safer and less immediate contexts of history and mythology, and no doubt he — like his literary contemporaries — was further compromised by being so dependent on patronage in high places. But we must enter Shakespeare’s mind set to appreciate that his horror of a moral universe in chaos was real. Such horror would extend to civil and class conflict, not to mention mob action — and ironically these are themes explosively examined in Coriolanus, the tragedy which triggers The Player’s misplaced scorn in this play.” (Jamie Portman, March 13, 2011, www.capitalcriticscircle.com )
It is clear, nevertheless, that we are not mostly concerned with historical explanations of events but rather with the extraordinary character that Stewart has created and the excellent performance that Kramer gave us then, and that Warburton produces in 2014. Interestingly enough, Warburton changes the dynamic of the show. This actor is not the physically dissolute creature who incarnates human suffering and the spirit of revolt by his run down physical presence.
On the contrary, he incarnates the great actor, performing events that trace his own history in relation to the bloody revolt. There is a sense that this is a performance within a performance, where the Player retains all his dignity, while taking over the narrative of a tragic moment of social history. He appears thoughtful, compassionate as he meets up with and transforms himself perfectly into the rat-faced Davey, the huge hulking brute Fish , the timid young Top or the wildly passionate Pouch who harangues the crowd of suffering creatures with a stream of the most excellent rhetoric of rebellion one could want to hear. He also excels as the cart driver who swears furiously and then is able to create a chaotic battle field of rebels where a sudden murder, transforms a peaceful manifestation into an real rebellion and the event becomes a blood bath.
As Warburton speaks, we see and hear the armed soldiers advancing with their pikes and flint locks, swords and horses. The actor assumes the whole scenario by imposing the various tones of his voice, his energy and the his great authority as a fine Shakespearean actor. He is emotionally involved in his role but he appears to remain conscious of his status as a proud player. In this role, his plea for the true function of theatre, which is not to promote the authority of the ruling classes but to defend the downtrodden, becomes even more moving, more meaningful because he remains Shakespeare’s equal, somehow.
This actor, by the very nature of his presence, appears to challenge Shakespeare and that is what gives his anger an enormous nobility. All this is confirmed by the screaming coming from the next cell. We know that he is supposed to be put to a horrible death because he dared defend his fellow man. Yet, he seems to project the sense that he is performing and because of that, there is a special greatness in this Player who appears to carry the torch of history, and of theatre, actually becoming Shakespeare’s alter ego, the fellow we might have wanted him to be as he confronts Shakespeare on this own ground. A striking performance within a performance by a great Shakespearean “player”. The dynamics of the play have changed and we are fascinated by this new world that unfolds before us. !!
Go see this performance before it leaves for the Edinburgh Festival.
The Player’s Advice to Shakespeare. By Brian K. Stewart
Directed by John Koensgen,
Interpreted by David Warburton.
New Theatre of Ottawa.
Playing at 738 a Bank St. (at Second Ave.)
July 25 to 27 at 8pm with a 2pm matinee on the 27th
For tickets go to the New Ottawa Theatre Web Site:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-players-advice-to-shakespeare-week-2-tickets-11718974769