Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Gateway Theatre, presents Wildwoman by Kat Sandler running until May 10th at the Martha Cohen Theatre. This is a big, bold, and brash story that explores the life and times of Catherine de Medici, her husband Henry II of France, his mistress Didi, Pete the real-life inspiration for the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, and his wife and lady in waiting to Catherine, Kitty. Tickets are available at albertatheatreprojects.com or by calling the box office at 403.294.7402.
George Bernard Shaw said, “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” This is perhaps the best way to describe Wildwoman by Kat Sandler, a raw, racy and provocative play that is both very funny and very serious that is bursting with energy all told by a terrific ensemble that bring the play to life.
Our story begins on Saturday October 28, 1533 with the wedding of Catherine de Medici and Henry who at the time was second in line to the throne of France. Both were fourteen years of age. The marriage was consummated under the watchful eye of the King and so began a ten-year struggle for Catherine to produce an heir as Henry would, after the death of his older brother Francis, become The Dauphin and therefore next in line to the throne.
While Henry and Cathy shared a love of hunting and were committed to producing children their marriage would always be overshadowed by Henry’s love and devotion to his mistress Diane de Poitiers, known in the play as Didi, who was twenty years his senior and was a direct rival to Cathy’s power and rights as Queen.
In addition to the royal love triangle, we are introduced to Petrus Gonsalvus known in the play as Pete who was the inspiration for the story Beauty and the Beast. Pete suffered from hypertrichosis, which is an abnormal amount of hair growth over the whole body. It turns out that the beast, who Henry keeps in a golden cage, is a gentle soul who eventually becomes a member of the court and marries Kitty who sees this marriage as an opportunity for her to secure her position in the world.
Director Jamie King has assembled a terrific cast that brings depth and comedy to the play while diving into some very dark realities about life in the Royal Court. Synthia Yusuf plays Cathy as a determined and intelligent woman who is actively working to achieve her goal of giving Henry an heir while also securing more power and position for herself.
Nathan Kay’s Henry goes from a somewhat spoiled and impulsive young prince whose childish tantrums turn a darker shade as he grows into manhood and becomes King of France. N Girgis is Didi, Henry’s long-time mistress, who over time manages to gain more influence over Henry because of Henry’s love and affection for her.
Connor Suart as Pete – the beast – seems the most genuinely human of the group and Connor plays him as a gentle and curious beast who grows into a kind and caring man whose greatest desire is nothing more than to be surrounded by his wife and children.
And finally, there is Catherine Gonsalvus known as Kitty in the play who recognizes that her own position in life depends on playing the role that others want and conceding to their demands all too aware that she leads a life that depends on the favours and whims of others.
Narda McCarroll’s set design features passageways in the back and four giant gold columns that reach into the sky. The empty stage is easily transformed into a throne room or a dungeon by changing nothing more than a few set pieces. That offers flexibility to the scene transitions that allow for the play to speed along at a rapid pace. Plus, all the furnishings and set elements end in tree branches that remind us of a forest.
The costumes by Alaia Hamer are stylistically fitting for the time and flexible enough for the physicality the play demands. The lighting by Gerald King and sound design by Nancy Tam presents us with hints of a forest just as the set does even though much of the action takes place within the walls of the castle. This is deliberate because the actual king’s court very much feels like a jungle where our characters must remain forever vigilant and aware of dangers and shifting fortunes.
Playing a character like Catherine de Medici which is based on a real historical figure in a play that explores power and gender and legacy is an interesting challenge. That had me wondering about the freedoms and constraints that offers an actor playing the role and so I contacted Synthia Yusuf to ask her about her own performance and how she felt about bringing this historical character to the stage?
SYNTHIA YUSUF
The thing about Catherine de Medici is that her story hasn’t quite infiltrated popular culture in the way that some others have. This was the time of Henry VIII and his famous six wives such as Anne Boleyn and there have been so many movies about those women that I feel like people already have an image of them in their mind. And while there are some people aware of Catherine de Medici, there are a lot of people who aren’t. So, I actually didn’t feel any pressure to live up to a figure that’s really present in popular culture.
I love describing Cathy as tenacious and I think, Kat Sandler has done a great job of capturing the essence of what we’re trying to portray which is this woman that is just relentlessly determined to get what she wants. Even with the odds stacked against her the whole time she never gives up. She is a survivor and she understood the rules and she played by the rules, but she really bent them to get what she wanted. She was a fighter for sure. She was very intelligent. Very well read. She really cared about politics. She was really interested in how to run the country and how a royal family should operate.
JAMES HUTCHISON
When you’re given something this rich to explore as an actor how do you approach the material. Was it overwhelming or did you have a good understanding about how you wanted to approach the story from the start.
SYNTHIA
Sometimes – not often – but every once in awhile a script will come across my lap and I will know the character intrinsically right away and this was one of those scripts. It’s not often you get a script like this – especially for women – where you get the opportunity to be diabolical and hilarious. And this is one of the few auditions where I felt no nerves at all. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And I got to read with Nathan who’s playing Henry. We auditioned together. We did a chemistry read together. And Nathan is a friend of mine, so I’ve known him for years, so I instantly felt comfortable and I just felt so at home in the material from the moment I read it.
JAMES
You mentioned Nathan and you mentioned chemistry, so you need chemistry and trust as a cast when you’re doing a big complicated, physically challenging show like this one. What’s it like working with this cast and your director Jamie King as you brought the story to the stage.
SYNTHIA
Jamie has assembled a fantastic group of people. It’s a five-hander. Five of us in this play. And what I love about this group of people is that we all care really deeply about the process and about the work but we’re also all very very playful. And I think because it has such contemporized language that Kat has used to write the play all of us feel very comfortable in that style. So, that allows us to be able to be inspired by our natural impulses within it and I think the five of us have really found a nice balance of working really hard but also letting the play be alive – letting it breathe – letting new things land.
JAMES
So, the first act is very funny, and the second act takes a turn and it gets more serious so I’m just curious as an actress and seeing how the play shifts and changes how do you approach that because it’s interesting to me how that change works.
SYNTHIA
The first act definitely has more of a farcical silliness to it whereas in the second act her life does get darker as we journey on in the play. However, it was important to Jamie that this remain a comedy throughout so as actors that’s part of the challenge. Having all of us being on board to maintain a kind of a playfulness throughout the drama. And I think that actually makes it more devastating in a way. That’s what I find most interesting to watch because that’s life, right. It’s not always one thing. We could be laughing at a funeral or crying at our wedding. That’s how humans are.
JAMES
So, you’ve had quite a career. You’ve been in Frozen and played Maria in Sound of Music and now you’re doing this. So where are you at in your career and did you imagine you’d be here and what is the vision for the future?
SYNTHIA
No, I didn’t. And it’s nice to kind of be present in that so thank you for asking that question because I’ve been at it for a long time. I went to theatre school right out of high school and my focus was musical theatre, so I had a lot of singing and dance training and coming out of school it took a long time to get things going. I would say I probably had my breakthrough just before the pandemic.
And since then, I’ve gotten so many incredible opportunities ranging from doing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Toronto which is this huge West End – Broadway Play that I worked on for a year and a half. And I’ve been travelling all over Canada working on musicals and Shakespeare and now this. So, I’d say the variety of what I’ve been able to do is something I never thought would be there for me but I’m so thrilled and privileged and grateful to have done all of that work.
For the future I’ve always said I’m happy as long as I get to keep doing this. And I am so excited to be working on Wildwoman. I have never done something like this before that required so much of me as an actor. And I’m really interested in more work like this. Like I said at the beginning, you don’t get scripts like this every day. And so, my hope for the theatre landscape as a whole is that there are more parts for women like this and that I get to play some of them.
JAMES
It sounds to me like what shifted in the world was that opportunities began to be offered rather than you chasing them all the time.
SYNTHIA
I kind of feel when I started out diversity wasn’t a thing that people really prioritized that much and I just felt that when I left school there wasn’t a spot for me and I pulled away from the industry for a long time because I felt like no one wanted to see someone that looked like me in the parts that I wanted to play. And so, I think it was kind of a push and pull with me and the industry. I had a few doors open and I really just kind of pushed through them. I played Ariel in The Little Mermaid a couple of years ago and that’s something I never thought that I would do, but someone took the opportunity to see me in that kind of a role and once you start getting those opportunities you start to believe that you can do anything.
JAMES
Okay, just for fun I’m curious to know if you could have Cathy over for dinner what would you serve? And then second, what would you want to ask her about her life?
SYNTHIA
Well, I’m not a very good cook. So, I would probably take Cathy to a restaurant because she was a queen. She’s used to eating something very fine – something very delicious – well crafted. I’m quite a foodie so I love fine dining restaurants and since I’m from Vancouver I’m not super familiar with the Calgary scene, but I did go to Caesars last night and it was fantastic. So, maybe I’d take her there. She was quite a prolific hunter. So maybe I would want to serve her some boar – she hunted boar. I think she’d really like a farm to table restaurant.
And I would love to ask Cathy what those ten years were really like for her. Those ten years where she couldn’t have a child and that’s all that anyone wanted or expected from her. Because that’s a really long time to be trying and having all eyes on you because that’s your only purpose. I would just love to hear from her and know what her mind set was like at that time.
JAMES
Alright you’ve had dinner and she gets to see the show. What do you think she’d make of the play and your portrayal of her and her life?
SYNTHIA
I like to think that Cathy was cool, you know. She was a patron of the arts. That was very important to her. So, I’d like to think in a modern context she still would be. And I was surprised by how many people loved this play in Vancouver and I really hope that Calgary loves the show. It’s very unorthodox and probably not for everyone but I was really shocked by how many people really did love it. People from all different age brackets and generations and so I think she would be in that group of people that loves it as well and I think she would find it hilarious.
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For me personally, Wildwoman feels somewhat like Game of Thrones and Synthia Yusuf’s portrayal of Catherine embodies the intelligence and sense of humour of Tyrion Lannister while also having the cunning and ruthless survival instincts of Cersei Lannister. That gives you a feel for the tone of the play and so you know it’s going to be an evening of sharp observations about sex, politics, and power with plenty of big bold moments that give the play an exciting energy.
Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Gateway Theatre, presents Wildwoman by Kat Sandler running until May 10th at the Martha Cohen Theatre. Tickets are available online at albertatheatreprojects.com or by calling the box office at 403.294.7402.
Wildwoman is recommended for ages 16+ and features mature content,
strong language, and sexual situations.
