With all of the present-day scrutiny of politicians’ private lives, it is hard to imagine that Canada once had a prime minister who spoke to ghosts and allegedly visited prostitutes.
Phoenix Players is shining a spotlight on William Lyon Mackenzie King, the nation’s longest serving and perhaps most eccentric prime minister, in the company’s upcoming production of Rexy! at the Gladstone Theatre in Little Italy.
The play covers King’s leadership role during the Second World War and the postwar years leading to his death in 1950.
Billed as a political satire, Rexy! focuses on the many challenges King faced while heading the Canadian government.
Written by Canadian theatre veteran Allan Stratton, Rexy! premiered in Toronto in 1981 and has played across Canada since then.
Despite having many humorous elements, director André Dimitrijevic says the play is “not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination.”
Instead, the production covers many serious political topics such as military conscription and Canada’s autonomy from Britain on the international stage.
The tensions between English and French Canadians are also addressed in the play, something Dimitrijevic says keeps its story relevant.
“It’s more than just capturing the events of the day,” he says. “It was stressing the difficulties of governing a country with the dual nature of French and English.”
Beyond the politics of the period, Rexy! also focuses on the complicated personal life and character of King.
Although the play does focus on the more sensationalized elements of King, Dimitrijevic says his production challenges a lot of the myths surrounding the Liberal leader.
While the presence of King’s mother and grandfather — the 19th-century Upper Canada rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie — do appear on stage, Dimitrijevic says he intentionally does not have the central character interact with the ghosts.
He chose to do this because he doesn’t think King actually believed in the ghosts.
“They were the internal discussions in his head that went on,” he says.
On stage, the ghosts appear in the background and provide the interior monologue for King to discuss the play’s narrative.
The supernatural elements of King’s life represent his internal conflict, says Ottawa actor Craig Miller, who portrays King in the production.
“It indicates an insecure side to him, that he needed those signs to be able to make decisions,” says Miller.
That complexity is one of the main challenges Miller says he is facing in trying to portray King on stage.
“He’s one of the longest serving prime ministers and probably one of the least understood,” he says.
Miller says he wants to represent King as a figure stretched in multiple directions. King presented a strong image to the outside world, but internally he struggled with doubts and paranoia, Miller says.
“I’m trying to play him as this human figure, who has this façade of being a strong Canadian leader, but has all these demons that he fights with all the time.”
Dimitrijevic says audiences can expect something beyond just pure historic fact.
“It’s an interesting play because I think it presents something that a lot of people today would not be aware of,” says Dimitrijevic. “It’s more than just a lesson in history.”