Bard’s wife crafts sandbox world that demands leaning in

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This article was published 19/11/2021 (1736 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“I long for the sea,” announces Anne Hathaway at the start of this 92-minute, one-hander drama by Winnipeg-born, Alberta-based playwright Vern Thiessen. Considering some of the circumstances of her life to be revealed, it will prove to be a shocking statement.

Hathaway, played by Winnipeg actor Debbie Patterson, is better known as the wife of William Shakespeare, to the extent that she is known at all. The Bard had three children with her, but he largely kept his distance throughout his career as it blossomed so fruitfully in the Stratford hothouse. Hence, the woman has largely existed in a cruel obscurity, even in the public imagination. (She barely figures in the whimsical Marc Norman/Tom Stoppard script of Shakespeare in Love.)

With this play, Thiessen seeks to rectify that state of affairs with a backstory that, among other things, suggests the living arrangement was due to Shakespeare’s homosexuality, an affirmation that the “Fair Lord” in many of his sonnets were indeed a reference to his lover.

Hathaway, for her part, is surprisingly worldly about such concerns; the arrangement allows her to indulge her own desires with a succession of willing men. At the same time, she proves to be a doting mother to the three children she had with “Bill,” including her daughters Judith and Susanna, and her auspiciously named son Hamnet. “Hamnet is a stupid name, don’t you think?,” says Anne wryly.

Thiessen has fashioned the play as a kind of celebration of Hathaway, who has a decidedly bohemian sensibility in matters of life and love. But the approach of this streamed production eschews the Elizabethan dress and period set design of more traditional productions. Here, the simply dressed Anne employs a sand table as a kind of mini-theatre within the larger venue. (This play was filmed by Sam Vint on the stage of the Prairie Theatre Centre.)

This greatly accommodates Patterson, a founding member of Shakespeare in the Ruins and the founder of Sick & Twisted Theatre, a Winnipeg company designed for artists with disabilities. Patterson is able to work in her wheelchair, but the sand table also allows her the power to act, in effect, as not only as the star but the director and set designer of Hathaway’s own story, utilizing literal sticks and stone to play all the characters, and changing each set with the sweep of her hand. (To be accurate, the play was directed by Eric Blais, who worked closely with Patterson to adapt this bold iteration of Thiessen’s work.)

It all makes for a piquant counterpoint to the big formal theatre of Shakespeare’s Globe. The sandbox is perhaps the cradle of creativity in this more domestic domain. But it proves no less potent as the play leads to its climax, involving both a tragedy that befalls the family, and the devastating revelation of Shakespeare’s last will and testament.

Patterson makes interesting choices here: her portrayal lacks the dramatic flair other actors might be tempted to layer on.

Befitting an Anne Hathaway getting sand under her nails, her portrayal is earthy and gritty and real.

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