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Rabbittown Theatre Company began performances of its New World Theatre Project on Saturday (June 19) in Cupids NL with two shows, The Tiring House by Chris Driedzic and  Caesar, adapted from William Shakespeare by Brad Hodder.

The New World’s inaugural season is part of the “Cupids 400” celebrations, which recognize the founding of Cupids in 1610 as the first English settlement in Canada.

In addition to The Tiring House and Caesar, the company will stage three other plays: Kerri MacDonald’s Feast of the Sword, “an historical re-imaging of” Cupids founder John Guy’s “journey to the New World”; Benn Pittman’s Colony of the Heart, which links the lives of early settlers in Cupids and present day Newfoundlanders who move to Alberta for work; and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Andy Jones as Bottom.

 The plays are performed on the Indeavour Stage, an interpretation of an Elizabethan- Jacobean playhouse.  The building suggests a cross between new world and old, as its materials are intended to look like they came from the dismantled ship that brought settlers to this shore, and its form is that of the place they left behind (sort of, as the settlers were from Bristol). The theatre itself can be disassembled and the company plans to tour shows along with the structure in the future.

The theatre was not quite finished for the June 19 opening—it did not yet have the sail canvas covering its roof, and the upper area playing space needed some finishing touches—but the timber skeleton was itself very handsome, evoking the inviting warmth of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon more than, say, the current Globe in London.

The building is nestled and the back of a treed grove, at Cupid’s Haven, once a church and now a B&B. The approach to the site offered classic glimpses of the Avalon peninsula’s tremendous beauty: rock outcroppings covered in evergreen forests are bracketed by a metallic sea and powder blue sky, and all is lit up in sharp contrast by a northern sun.

Hodder has done good work with Caesar. His script, which uses Shakespeare’s language and incident throughout, is highly economical, running to 80 minutes and employing just three actors. The result is a serious and thoughtful production that relies on some smart doubling of roles and work with props, including a red cloak that represents Julius Caesar in a puppet-like manner. The action concentrates on Dave Sullivan’s Brutus and Neil Butler’s Cassius, with Laura Huckle taking on roles from Portia to Mark Anthony to Brutus’ young servant. All three actors handle the verse well and deliver their lines with a naturalism rather than a “rhetorical” declamation (except in Brutus’ and Antony’s speeches at the forum). The actors do occasionally directly address the audience but much of the action remains behind the fourth wall.

Caesar is well worth the 75-minute drive from St. John’s, and if this show is any indication of the rest of the New World Theatre’s season, Rabbittown’s work will add considerable distinction to the Cupids 400 celebrations. This should be especially true once the other productions enter the repertoire, allowing audiences more specifically and consciously to reflect upon the act of commemoration that the town is now undertaking. The group of productions will play in rep throughout the summer.

For more details and ticket info call: 709-528-1610