by AMY BARRATT

It’s been there all along, tucked away in the back of my Complete Works of William Shakespeare. But I’d never bothered to read The Rape of Lucrece—had no idea what it was about, even. Now, though, having seen this long poem dramatized by actor Gareth Potter, I’m quite sure I’ll never forget the story.

Although Lucrece wasn’t written as a play, its author was a playwright, and he gives the actor a lot to work with in terms of first-person speeches. What’s more, Shakespeare jumps right into the heart of the action here in a way that he doesn’t when he has a five-act format to pepper with subplots and spear-carriers. The invigorating, sometimes harrowing production clocks in at just over an hour. The creation of a world using minimal props—a chair, two “columns” that are actually hanging cloth, and three picture frames—is vintage Gravy Bath.

There are basically three characters, all played here by Potter under the direction of Anthony Kokx: Collatine, a soldier; his wife Lucrece; and Tarquin, the king’s son. The two men are posted with the Roman army at Ardea. One night, for whatever reason, Collatine begins to speak about how happy he is with Lucrece, how beautiful and chaste she is. Tarquin, hearing this, decides that he must have her. He steals away to Collatine’s home where he is offered every hospitality. That night, he sneaks into Lucrece’s chamber, rapes her and immediately returns to camp.

It’s uncomfortable stuff, even for modern audiences who think they’ve seen it all. First, Shakespeare has Tarquin wrestle at length with his own conscience over the thing that he intends to do. The rapist is portrayed as a slave to his lust. He knows the thing he plans to do is wrong, but is incapable of stopping himself.

Where a contemporary writer might, out of respect for the woman, refrain from describing the rape in detail, Shakespeare does so in graphic terms. It is perhaps because of this that he chose to make a poem instead of a play of this material—it may have been considered just too sordid for the stage.

Although he’s writing in a time when women are considered as property, and rape is usually portrayed as a crime not against the woman herself but against her husband or father, Shakespeare is too sensitive a writer not to think about Lucrece. In stanza after stanza, he has her grapple with what has happened to her. If the rapist’s soul-searching made us uncomfortable, Lucrece’s agony is almost impossible to watch, especially as it’s portrayed by a strapping lad.

At this point, the production starts to suffer for the lack of female influence. It’s not that Potter and Kokx haven’t done an excellent job interpreting the Elizabethan language so that we can follow, and differentiating the characters through voice and gesture. But the piece isn’t called Tarquin, or Collatine, it’s called Lucrece, and so, it seems to me, it needs a female voice.

In this production, Potter wears essentially modern dress, suggesting that we are meant to make a connection to our own time and place. Unfortunately, that approach only points up the vastly different worldviews of Shakespeare’s time and ours. To make this story resonate today, it should be set in a non-Western society.

The Rape of Lucrece continues to Jan. 29 at Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), $10–$15, 540-0774

>> Stage Listings