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Michel Marc Bouchard, translated by Linda Gaboriau, directed by Sarah Stanley

Factory Theatre, Factory Theatre Backspace, Toronto

November 8-December 2, 2001

"A Rattling Skeleton"

Michel Marc Bouchard's "Down Dangerous Passes Road" ("Le Chemin des passes dangereuses") may have premièred in 1998, but it is an extremely old-fashioned play.  It's the kind of work that seeks to mythologizes a country, here Quebec, by setting up a symbolic confrontation of allegorical characters.  Fine acting and an unusual design can't overcome the feeling that Bouchard has given us only the skeleton of a play not a fully fleshed-out drama.

The most interesting aspect of the production is David Boechler's design.  To enter the Factory Studio Theatre we ourselves have to travel down Dangerous Passes Road.  A tree-lined gravel path dips diagonally across the narrow space dividing it into four awkward seating sections.  To the right as you enter is a wrecked truck with a body in the front passenger seat.  To the left is another body of someone seemingly thrown from the wreck.  John Gzowski's soundscape of birdsong makes us feel right away that we're in the middle of nowhere.  Andrea Lundy's lighting is not as

atmospheric as the sound and is generally much brighter than the wooded setting would demand. 

After we go to black and the lights come up, we find two of the young men we thought were dead now moving and talking.  They are brothers, Ambrose and Carl, endlessly repeating lines of poetry, one concerning three possessions, the other about walking in a straight line yet circling round and round.  A lighting cue switches them from this rambling to reality and they attempt to have a conversation but keep disagreeing about what is appropriate to discuss.  Linda Gaboriau is an excellent translator, so I can only assume that it is Bouchard's inclination to use too many adjectives that prevents the dialogue from ever sounding natural. 

Carl is angry that the crash has made him miss his own wedding.  Ambrose is angry that his lover dying of AIDS has dropped him to prevent him seeing the ravages of the disease.  Shortly after the discussion and rediscussion of their uninteresting lives has become tedious, the oldest brother Victor appears.  Soon we learn that what binds the three beside their brotherhood is a shared guilt they feel involving their father's death very near the spot where Victor's truck has just crashed.  Not only that, what has reunited the brothers for the first time in three years is Carl's wedding which he rather thoughtlessly arranged to take place on the fifteenth anniversary of their father's death.  How are these coincidences related?  Have the three in fact survived the crash?  To reveal the answers would be to ruin what little tension there is.

The brothers each represent an aspect of Quebec.  The three possessions mentioned in the poem are eyes, heart and soul.  Carl the youngest, who lives in Quebec City (the suburbs), is a manager at Price Club and thinks more of maintaining social appearances than of love for his bride is "eyes".  Ambrose who lives in Montreal (the city), appraises art and mourns for his dying lover is "heart".  Victor, who still lives in the family's home town of Alma (the country), is a fisher and forester, and has separated from his second wife is, as the town's name suggests "soul".  They were their father's dearest possessions, but he did not allow them to grow, so when he fell into a river they did not save him.  He is a Dionysian figure, holding a poem about them in one hand and a bottle of Labatts in the other, just before he fell.  His body has never been found, caught forever in an eddy in the river.  How fitting this is since the father's poetry itself, which all three can recite, is as circular and repetitious as a litany.  In one of many over-inflated statements, Ambrose declares, "We are trapped in our father's poetry".    

It is not unusual to discover symbols and archetypes beneath the surface reality a work presents, but in this case, it is clear Bouchard began with an allegory and then attempted to give it a naturalistic façade.  I say this because the "real" dialogue among the brothers feels so forced and because Bouchard, never content to let us discover his symbolic content on our own, continually underlines it.  In this lament for Quebec the younger generation has allowed an ideal to pass away and are now haunted and powerless to reclaim it.     

All three actors are well cast and try to give life to these walking symbols.  Brandon McGibbon (Carl) has the best success probably because his shallow, materialist character is not as burdened with pretentious discourse.  Tony Munch (Victor) looks and acts like the tough guy he's said to be but Bouchard gives him improbably lyrical speeches that undermine his character.  I am surprised that a gay playwright like Bouchard would create such a clichéd gay character as Ambrose--witty, overemotional, fussy, preoccupied with taste.   David Jansen at least keeps him from being effete by suggesting the underlying strength of his anger.  His revelation of his early infatuation for Carl is the only authentic moment in the play. 

Director Sarah Stanley manages the action well on this unpromising acting space.  But she adds to the tedium by assigning the three actors repetitive gestures to go along with their repetitive phrases. 

This is a play that wears our its welcome well before its 75 minutes are over.  In his "message" printed in the programme, Bouchard claims that his play shows "thoughts stripped of life's armour of lies" to reveal "frankness".  Instead of this supposed "frankness" all Bouchard really gives us are rattling bones of pretence.

Photo: Brandon McGibbon, David Jansen and Michael Spencer Davis. ©2005 Factory Theatre.