“This place is haunted,” muses performer K. Reed Needles. “I can take you around the theatre and point to pieces of paint and bent door handles and tell you their stories.”

Needles muses from behind a scruffy gray beard and a cragged face lined with indents of emotion. The actor and teacher worked within the bowels of Hart House Theatre as a technician, a fight choreographer, and a director starting in 1972. In 1973, Needles met and befriended esteemed Canadian author, Robertson Davies, and in 1986, Davies urged Needles to leave.

“I lived here like a mole, underground, for 10 years,” he explains, scanning the subterranean offices of Hart House Theatre with nostalgia. “Finally Professor Davies told me, ‘Reed’”—Needles begins to slip into the voice of Davies, a slurred and languid Oxford accent—“‘Hart House is a man-killer, and it has killed better men than you. So I suggest you go out and do something with your life before you become another victim.’ And after that, I left.”

Needles has just finished up a dress rehearsal with director John Krisak, where, surrounded by a simple set of office furniture and over-sized books, he pays homage to the Canadian icon, bringing Davies back to life in the one-man show Robertson Davies: The Peeled I. The show explores the life and intellectual journey of the author through a series of nine monologues and two acts and is told completely in Davies’ own words.

John Krisak, a former high school teacher and actor-turned-director scripted the show. He glances at Needles across the table and rebuts, “Davies wrote the words, I just arranged them.”

“Davies was the kind of man who, once you had a conversation with him, you never forgot it,” Needles adds. “He was majestic, charismatic, and a terror in the classroom.”

Needles and Krisak met when they acted opposite each other some 10 years ago at Stratford. But the idea for the show came from a conversation between the two in 2007. Now the duo interact with a practiced ease, having worked closely together on this show for the past three years. Both men speak of Davies with the reverent awe of retelling a myth, chronicling the auspicious history of Davies’ involvement in theatre, literature, intellectual culture, and the University of Toronto as though speaking of a fallen warrior.

“After the inception of the show, I began to read everything. I stumbled onto an essay called ‘The Peeled Eye’ by Davies, and it’s about his youth and early childhood,” Krisak explains. “He has his eyes peeled, and this is what gives him the capacity to write, because he has this kind of second sight, and I knew that we had to begin here. And then very quickly the piece began to fall into place.”

Krisak explains that the piece is both an autobiographical reflection, as well as an account of the charismatic storyteller who was once an on-campus staple at U of T.

“It’s too easy to portray Davies as a one-dimensional icon and too easy to make fun of him. Yes, some people thought of him as a pompous ass and others as a kind and caring mentor—we present Davies in a series of snapshots. Every anecdote he tells is self-deprecating in some way. The insecurities leak through, and it’s left to the audience to pass judgment on the man.”

The show, Krisak explains, is dynamic in its use of characters from Davies’ point of view. To Krisak, Davies was a true raconteur, whose proclivity towards peeled vision allowed him to enter a role as a person. Needles’ challenge is to reenact that sense of embodiment and to understand his surroundings through the Davies’ lens.

“I only know Davies through his writing,” Krisak explains. “But I overheard an interview with him on CBC one day on my way to work. Davies says to the interviewer: ‘Give me a copper coin, and I will tell you a golden tale.’ And that’s just how he was, a wonderful storyteller. It’s simply a gift.”

Needles picks up the thread: “It’s been an entire generation since Davies was seen with his mane of white hair, walking around the University of Toronto campus, telling anecdotes and challenging students to a fight, and something very important has been lost since his passing. In the end, I hope that the applause is for the man that Davies was, and I hope that we will inspire those unfamiliar with his work to begin to look into the writings and thoughts of the man.”

“I feel completely opposite,” Krisak laughs. “When the applause comes, I want it to be for us. It is a show, after all.”

Robertson Davies: The Peeled I opens at Hart House Theatre on March 3. For more information, visit harthousetheatre.ca.