Eleanor Crowder stars in Shakespeare’s Will

A career peak despite the pandemic

By Rachel Eugster

For theatregoers and theatre makers, the last two years have been a desert. Even down to recurrent mirages of Opening Soon…No, no, cancelled…Shut the theatres! Yet another tantalizing shimmer on the horizon, yet another lockdown. Again!

Well, this time, after three postponements, beloved Ottawa actor and Glebe resident (and Glebe Report volunteer!) Eleanor Crowder is finally able to welcome you to The Gladstone Theatre to enjoy Shakespeare’s Will.

The one-woman play, written in modern English by Canadian playwright Vern Thiessen, offers a marvelous role for an actress in prime form. Anne Hathaway married William Shakespeare, eight years her junior, and then held the fort in Stratford while he built the career we all know about. Anne is not on record like her famous husband, so Thiessen’s imagining invites us to consider her life through a modern lens. A modern feminist lens, in fact.

Who would she be now? Her life too includes pandemic. Plague swept England three times in the Shakespeares’ lifetimes. War loomed: the Armada was defeated off England’s coast (by an apparent act of God) when Anne’s younger kids – twins – were three. Her story of joy, loss and survival makes for vivid theatre and invites comparison to our own lives. How do our tales of crisis and joy add up?

Diana Fajrajsl directs, Bear & Co. produces. The Gladstone remains cautious, requiring vaccine passports and masks, guaranteeing distanced seating. And if, just if, the upswing closes us down again between deadline and press time…well, count yourself invited to celebrate the joys of gutsy resilience just as soon as we can open.

If we can run, Anne Hathaway invites you to wear your Easter bonnet to come celebrate spring and the return of theatre! Or go in for a pound and dress in full Elizabethan regalia for Shakespeare’s birthday on April 23.

The show runs April 20 through May 7. Tickets can be found at thegladstone.ca.

Rachel Eugster is a singer, author, actor and founding member of Bear & Co. and the Dragon’s Tea Trio.