Robertson Davies the Playwright and Ausable Theatre

by Jeff Culbert, Artistic Director

In 1997 I was acting in Port Stanley, and between shows I would browse the library, looking for plays for Ausable's first season. I had no idea at the time that Robertson Davies had written plays, but I found some, and half way through reading Overlaid, I decided that I had found my season opener. A retired opera-loving farmer with lots of attitude and his long-suffering daughter. This would be appreciated by the country people, the city people, the young and the old, the male and the female.

I read a few more Davies plays, and I liked them too. I decided to make our inaugural production a Robertson Davies double bill, adding the fantastic Eros at Breakfast, a visit inside the body of a young man falling in love for the first time. The play is set in the solar plexus, and the officials there deal with the crisis with representatives of the intellect, the heart and the liver.

Overlaid and Eros at Breakfast opened Ausable’s first season in 1998, and Robertson Davies plays have been part of each subsequent playbill. In 1999, we staged the first production of A Jig for the Gypsy in 25 years. It was only the second production of this play since its opening at Toronto’s Crest Theatre in 1954. It’s all about magic and politics – a Welsh gypsy’s fortune-telling abilities are manipulated by electioneers, resulting in her downfall. It ends with the banding together of the undefeated forces of magic. As in the previous season, the Davies play proved to be our most popular.

In 2000, we staged Hunting Stuart, the story of an unambitious Ottawa bureaucrat who snorts a transformative powder and becomes one of his ancestors, Bonny Prince Charlie. Once again, a rarely-performed Davies play was very well received, and became our most successful play to date.

In September of 2001, we presented the first production of King Phoenix in nearly 50 years, taking audiences back to pre-Roman Britain for the legend of Old King Cole, the “merry old soul” of nursery rhyme fame. He is at odds with the Archdruid Cadno, who would like to bump him off and bring in a new era based upon druidic religious and scientific knowledge. It's a great psychological and physical battle for the future of the kingdom and the world.

To me this is pretty interesting stuff. It’s full of life and it’s grand and intelligent and funny, and I don’t understand why these' plays have been ignored by most of our theatre community. Here's hoping that Ausable Theatre's exploration of Davies' plays will inspire other companies to take a look at them.