WIll Somers: Keeping your head – Brault’s impressive artistry raises genre to a superior level

To say that Ottawa actor Pierre Brault is a shape-shifting, identity-changing wonder doesn’t tell the whole story. His latest offering, Will Somers, is winning enough to attract even those playgoers who are getting sick and tired of one-man shows. Indeed, its impressive artistry raises an often overworked genre to a superior level.

At the Gladstone, Brault is delivering a robustly entertaining 90-minute excursion into the world of Will Somers, the witty and inspired fool who served as court jester to King Henry Vlll and survived to tell the tale. Do Will’s memories lurch over the line into the “tall-tale” category? Who knows? Who cares? This Will, in his own way, is the type of performance artist always ready to provide fodder for our amused speculation. We happily suspend judgement: given that our literature is full of unreliable narrators, is it really wrong in this instance to sacrifice truth for the sake of a good story? Hence, we’re easily drawn into those moments of sly innuendo mischievously conjured up by Pierre Brault’s Will when he gets onto the subject of Henry’s soured daughter, Mary, and the real nature of his relationship with her.

Noel Coward observed on more than one occasion that he was the kind of artist who takes light entertainment seriously. The same might be said of Pierre Brault who, in scripting this piece, has clearly done some meticulous homework on behalf of a historical figure whose life is more often than not shrouded in obscurity.

But the Will that Brault gives on stage is considerably more than a wraith from the past. There’s nothing idealized about this aging humpbacked imp in the grubby tunic who limps on stage and immediately starts inviting us into his confidence. But his is an ingratiating, seductive, outrageous presence, and we quickly begin to understand how it was that Will survived the bloody reign of a monarch ready to behead even those closest to him.

The moments when Will wins sufficient favour to become Henry’s jester are some of the most entertaining of the evening. But they also remind us that, in selecting such subject matter for his latest show, Brault was also dispatching himself onto a particularly treacherous high wire.

This piece could not have worked at all had Brault proved unable to supply himself and his alter ego with a steady supply of jests and jokes and cheeky double entendres that were true to the sensibility of the period, yet capable of amusing an audience in the year 2016. Brault has more than delivered on this need — and his passages of comic rhyming in particular are to die for.

The show has its own intimacy — so much so that, at times, Brault’s cheerfully conversational Will could be indulging in a personal bit of gossip directly with each of us in the audience. But in addition, this fine actor and the show’s director, AL Connors, are bringing an entire Tudor landscape to urgent, believable life on an essentially bare stage. So on the one hand, we get the full implications of the Church of England’s break with Rome and on the other the bawdiness of tavern life. We have jousting on the field and the ominous power plays in an increasingly monstrous and paranoid monarch’s court. We’re reminded of what it means to be consigned to the Tower, and further reminded that there are worse processes of execution than beheading.

All this is filtered through the sardonic but resilient prism of Will Somers — albeit with the help of other players on his personal stage. Brault has a field day with Henry’s first minister, Thomas Cromwell a terrifying engine of state yet so cold and humourless that Will’s japery goes over his head. He offers a more sympathetic Anne Boleyn than some of us might expect — but remember, we’re seeing her through the eyes of Will, a keen-eyed observer of life’s absurdities, but also a man capable of affection. Henry’s three children — the future Edward Vl, the future Bloody Mary, and the future Good Queen Bess — also assume shape and substance in Brault’s performance while also providing further context to a turbulent period in English history. Brault does more here than brilliantly inhabit a succession of characters. He also becomes a persuasive player in their wider world.

That’s impressive.

Will Somers: Keeping your Headi plays at the Gladstone Theatre until April 2. Tickets: 613 233 4523

Will Somers: Keeping Your Head

Written and performed by Pierre Brault

Director: AL Connors

Lighting and Set Designer: Martin Conboy

Sound Design: Lewis Caunter