Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
✭✭✭✭✭
written and directed by Marie Brassard
Infrarouge, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
December 3-18, 2005
Jimmy, the first solo work by Marie Brassard, longtime collaborator with Robert Lepage, is haunting play that presents a enigmatic character and situation whose profound resonances take one by surprise. Jimmy (Brassard), a self-effacing gay hairdresser, was born in the dream of a general who watched as Jimmy was just about to kiss a male client. The general dies just before the mouths meet leaving Jimmy in a dream character’s limbo and permanent state of desire. Fifty years later a Montreal actress dreams of him again, but now, much to his discomfort and our amusement, he is the unwilling object of her desire and has to share his body with the spirit of the actress’s dead mother.
On the surface the play is simply a tale of a displaced gay man. Yet, with a face painted like a Noh mask and body dressed in a modern suit, Jimmy combines both straight and gay, male and female, east and west, real and imaginary. Brassard’s speech modified through a vocoder, heightens the sense of dreamlike detachment. As the work’s 70 minutes progress, who or what Jimmy actually is becomes increasingly complex. Indeed, he may be an image of ourselves, a phantom subject to outside forces, surrounded by nothingness, defined and sustained only by desire. As theatre it is unforgettable.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-12-15.
Photo: Marie Brassard. ©Justin Bernhaut.
2005-12-15
Jimmy