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"When That I Was..." by The Shakespeare Company
Arrata Opera Centre
Friday, September 26 - Friday, October 10

More in: Theatre

The Shakespeare Company’s season opener, When That I Was…, is a gem of a play. It’s well-written, well-acted and well-directed. Laced with plenty of humour, and sprinkled liberally with excerpts from some of Shakespeare’s plays, including King Lear, Richard the Third and Hamlet, the play is a brilliant piece of writing, penned by Edward Atienza and John Mortimer in the early 1980s. The play premièred at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, and Alberta Theatre Projects went on to produce it during its 1985-86 season.

At the risk of offending Shakespeare devotees, it’s a welcome change to see The Shakespeare Company finally offer a contemporary play relating to its Shakespearean mandate. It’s only the second time the company has ventured in this direction, and it should do so more often. (The previous occasion was a co-production with Broad Minds Production of Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet.)

Directed by Vanessa Porteous, When That I Was… is a one-man show starring well-known Calgary actor Christopher Hunt, who takes on the role of Jack Rice, an aging, former player in Shakespeare’s company of actors.

The play opens after Shakespeare’s death. Hunt (as Rice) enters an old theatre on whose boards he tread years before. Since that time, it has been closed down and converted into a barn under the reign of the Puritans (parliament closed all theatres in England between 1642 and 1660).

A sense of nostalgia seeps throughout the space, with well-worn pieces of white cloth draped haphazardly on the dimly lit set, in amongst the straw bales. Between swigs of communion wine, Rice recounts snippets of his life as a player in Shakespeare’s company.

Though the production is a bit slow to take off, it soon reaches a good pace and moves rapidly from story to story. Through his tales, Rice touches on the life of Shakespeare, the company of actors that performed his plays, and the times in which they lived. It is by no means a comprehensive biography of the Bard, nor does it touch upon the debate of whether Shakespeare wrote his own plays; rather it offers little excerpts from his life and some of the characters that walked through it.

Shakespeare left no letters or diaries for biographers to dissect and very little is known about his personal life and thoughts. Hence, When That I Was… must, by necessity, take some liberties with his portrayal.

Wrapped within the play is a mini history lesson that touches upon such landmarks as the plague, the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and the Puritan suppression of the arts.

Hunt plays a wide variety of characters, from the Virgin Queen to Shakespeare player Dick Burbage and the Earl of Southampton (to whom Shakespeare wrote his famous love sonnets) to “uncle Will” himself. Hunt makes each character completely distinct, offering a nuanced and multi-layered performance with a good dose of humour.

The other aspect in the production worth a nod is Peter Moller’s outstanding sound design. The rain and the thunder, the applause, and the roar of angry mobs, helps the play come alive.

When That I Was… did something else for me; it whet my curiosity enough to make me finally crack open that copy of A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare that’s been gathering dust on my bookshelf for more than a year.