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From the Archives
Alas, Poor Yorick!
Editor's note: This is part of a series of columns highlighting some of the unusual treasures to be found in the U of G Library's Archival and Special Collections.
BY ANDREW VOWLES
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| This skull used in the Phoenix Theatre production of Hamlet will be coming out of retirement this winter for an exhibition at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre. |
“At its first curtain call, the skull accentuated its entrance with an ad lib act — numerous teeth fell out and clattered across the stage floor.” As if a production of Hamlet needed more drama.
Seems you really do get what you pay for, even when what you're buying is Yorick's skull for a stage production of one of Shakespeare's most enduring works. In a clipping contained in a file on Toronto's former Phoenix Theatre, a Toronto Sun writer explains that an unnamed props buyer struck gold in the University of Toronto's medical department, but must have ended up with a “lower-class cranium.”
Lower class or not, that prop now claims distinction as the only skull contained in the U of G Library's archives. It came to Guelph with other Phoenix items — scripts, photos, reviews, house programs, posters, set designs and sketches — from the theatre's relatively short run between 1975 and 1983.
The material belongs to the library's L.W. Conolly Collection, the largest Canadian theatre collection in the country. Says Lorne Bruce, head of Archival and Special Collections: “We don't really take props or costumes. The skull was a small article, and we had the ability to box and house it.”
Located in a converted warehouse on Dupont Street in Toronto, the 166-seat Phoenix was known for improvisation on a small stage. In 1981, the theatre staged a three-hour production of Hamlet.
The title role fell to John Evans, now a producer and director in commercial theatre who puts on events and seminars for corporate clients. Back then, he — and the production — received mixed reviews.
“John Evans will never be ready — not this time around at least,” wrote the London Free Press. But the Toronto Sun said the “lean, lanky, handsome and romantic” Evans was “well-suited to this most testing of all roles in the Shakespeare canon.”
The play was the Phoenix's contribution to that year's Toronto Theatre Festival, a three-week-long event billed in one newspaper advertisement as “the most ambitious theatre festival in Toronto ever.” This particular production of Hamlet was to be the company's last show after seven years at the Dupont location.
“When a theatre closes, you have to save it,” says Bruce. “We were interested in theatre history, and the Phoenix was part of Toronto theatre history along with the Factory Lab, the Open Circle and others.”
Alas, the poor Phoenix never rose from the ashes. But Yorick will be resurrected next year. Missing teeth or not, the skull will be included in a special exhibition at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre from January to May. That exhibition, being curated by art centre director Judith Nasby, will be part of the regional “Shakespeare: Made in Canada” festival to mark a Guelph visit of the Sanders portrait, thought to be the only portrait of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime.