✭✭✩✩✩

by Eugène Ionesco, directed by Jacques Lessard

Théâtre français de Toronto, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto

April 20-May 5, 2001

“Scrambled Oeufs”

Last year the traditional “Molière slot” in the season of the Théâtre français de Toronto was occupied by two plays by the 19th-century writer Alfred de Musset.  This year we move up a century with two plays by the father of the Theatre of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco, in a production by the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier of Montreal.  Unfortunately, director Jacques Lessard’s sledgehammer technique ruins the humour in both works as does the unbridled overacting he encourages.   

In "Jacques ou la soumission" and its short sequel “L’Avenir est dans les Oeufs”, written in 1950 and 1951 respectively, Ionesco explores one of his favourite topics, society’s pressure on the individual to conform.  In the first play the young man Jacques is pressured to accept his family’s values as represented first by their love of potatoes with lard and second by their desire for him to marry.  Much of the play is taken up with the family’s use of all means from cajoling to outright threats to force Jacques to accept the meal and then the dish, so to speak.  In the second play Jacques has to be taught how to mourn for his dead grandfather (who seems unaware of his condition) and to do his duty to society by replacing that loss with children.      

Yannick Bacquet’s imaginative set promises more than the production delivers.  Occupying most of the small stage is a huge of 500 gram can of “A la Mémé” brand “Pommes de terre au lard” advertising that it now comes with “Cubes de lard” as pictured in the delightfully sickening suggested serving on the label.  The can is flanked on either side by entrance flaps with bar codes, the numbers representing, as an in-joke, the dates of Ionesco’s birth and death.  When the can opens it reveals a room crammed full of enormous household appliances.  We are thus visually prepared for a critique of capitalism and consumerism, but the direction never follows this up.  In fact, to confuse matters, Lessard has Jacques Père reading a Russian newspaper.

Bacquet’s costumes, while they fit in with the set’s colour scheme, do not support the meaning of the play.  Why, in a play about the pressures to conform, give each of the characters such highly differentiated costumes?  Jacques is supposed to be struggling to assert his individuality against all the others characters, so why costume them as individuals.  It would have made more sense, as in “La Cantatrice chauve”, to have the two sets of parents look as much alike as possible. 

This signalled that the concept of the production is severely flawed--not that Lessard has a clear concept in the first place.  His idea seems to be to make all of the characters except Jacques and his bride Roberte in clownishly exaggerated character types.  He has the two sets of parents and Jacques’s sister, Jacqueline, begin the play by shouting out all their lines.  This gives the actors nowhere to go and no room for nuance, and so becomes tedious very quickly.  Anyone who has seen Ionesco at the Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris, where “La Cantatrice chauve” and “La Leçon” have been playing continuously since 1957, will know that the best way to put Ionesco’s verbal farces across is by playing them as deadly serious.  To play them as clown shows actually undercuts their humour.  It is reality that is seen as absurd, not artifice.  The relentless shouting, of course, causes much of Ionesco’s clever word-play to be lost.

Also contrary to the play’s theme of conformity, Lessard allows the actors completely different acting styles, which means that many have taken it a free rein to overact.  Worst of all is Louisette Dussault as Robert Mère.  Her constant posturing and mugging seems a shameless attempt to draw the focus away from others and on to herself.  Jacques Allard as Jacques Père exaggerates his character far too much right from the beginning.  Christiane Proulx as Jacques Mère and Patrice Coquereau as Robert Père do their best to act their parts in a sensible way in the first play, but both give way to the general shouting that reigns in the second.  As Jacqueline, Simone Chartrand acts as if she were in a sitcom but, compared to the antics of the previous four, seems quite restrained.  Veteran actors Gilles Pelletier and Françoise Graton play Jacques’ grandparents in the manner closest to the grave/comic style of the Théâtre de la Huchette, Pelletier in particular somehow remaining unscathed by the coarseness surrounding him.       

         

Jacques and his bride Roberte are meant to be completely different from all the others, and only in their scenes together has Lessard caught the right tone.  Stéphane Brulotte and Evelyne Rompré are excellent as these two who try to create their own world out of the sound “chat” as a refuge from parental inanity.  Brulotte gives Jacques both a goofiness that relates him to his family and the suppressed anger of an individual who knows he is being crushed.  Rompré, sadly hidden behind a mask in both plays, exudes sensuality as she takes on the task of seducing the unresponsive Jacques.  The transformation of the two into horse and rider during Roberte’s long speech in the first play is well directed and gracefully performed as is their gradual felinization afterwards. 

Both Claude Accolas’ lighting and Ludovic Bonnier’s soundscape and music are very effective.  In fact, so much of “Ouefs” is set to Bonnier’s intriguing rhythms that the play threatens to become a miniature musical.

One doesn’t normally think of Ionesco’s texts as delicate, but, when manhandled as here, it is clear how much is lost when their style and verbal subtlety are not respected.  Although the “Molière slot” return to Molière next year in the TfT’s expanded season, I hope Artistic Director Guy Mignault will continue to use it to explore more of France’s wealth of comic playwrights.

Photo: Stéphane Brulotte, Christiane Proulx and Evelyne Rompré. ©2001 Josée Lambert.