Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✭✭
by Michel Tremblay, directed by Diana Leblanc
Théâtre français de Toronto,
Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto
February 4-19, 2011
Théâtre français de Toronto is currently presenting Michel Tremblay’s À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou (Forever Yours, Marie-Lou) to celebrate the play’s 40th anniversary. Innovative in structure and profound in content, this may be the greatest of Tremblay’s many great plays. It is certainly one of the essential works of the canon of Canadian drama. Directed with great sensitivity by Diana Leblanc and acted to perfection by its cast, this production is a must-see not just for fans of Canadian drama but for lovers of great drama in general. If Americans ask what play is Canada’s Death of a Salesman or Long Day’s Journey into Night, this is it.
In Marie-Lou, two sisters, Carmen (Mélanie Beauchamp) and Manon (Janick Hébert), who will appear in Tremblay’s subsequent plays, meet near the family apartment where Manon still lives. Manon is still haunted by the voices of her parents and by an horrific event that took place ten years earlier. Carmen claims she has turned her back on the past and is free of it. Manon, however, relives the event every day. To show the parents’ influence, Tremblay presents the acrimonious conversation of Marie-Louise (Marie-Hélène Fontaine) and Léopold (Guy Mignault) of ten years ago as inextricably intertwined with that of the sisters. Words of the children echo those of their parents. Words of the parents provoke memories in the children. While we agree with Carmen that Manon must free herself from memory in order to live a normal life, the play’s structure suggests that neither one can totally be free of the past.
Tremblay carefully escalates the parents’ argument from a comical disagreement about coffee, toast and peanut butter to a deadly serious one about madness and death. The seemingly banal surface eventually gives way to the deep rift beneath. In twenty years of marriage Marie-Louise and Leopold have grown to loath each other. Marie-Louise news that she is pregnant provokes the crisis in the working class tragedy. There is already barely enough money or room for the parents, the two daughters and their unseen brother Roger. Marie-Louise’s pregnancy is no occasion for joy but of despair.
Designer Glen Charles Landry’s fantastic non-realistic places Marie-Louise, who knits throughout, upon a throne stage right of balls of wool against a latticed background of knitting needles. Léopold, who drinks throughout, is seated stage left upon a throne of beer glasses. He makes them thus the domestic Juno and Bacchus of the household--gods whom conventional offspring should revere but whose actions frequently repay devotion with torment. In the space between the elevated thrones, is a screen where we see flashbacks of Manon and Carmen as children eavesdropping on their parents’ devastating conversations outside their bedroom door. Landry’s lighting cues and video design easily make clear when the daughters are speaking in the present and when they relive painful moments of the past.
Director Diana Leblanc has drawn uncompromisingly intense performances from all four actors. It is to her credit that we have a complex view of each character. We can see why Marie-Louise should hate her unfulfilling life of domestic slavery but we can also see how her extreme religious devotion has made her incapable of pleasure. We can see why Léopold should appear as an unfeeling alcoholic brute to others, but we can also see how his unfulfilling factory job of 27 years has left him numb and how his lack of joy at home has driven him to drink--a demonic cycle he doesn’t have the strength to escape. Similarly, Manon’s idolization of her mother and obsession with the past is clearly as unhealthy as Carmen says it is. On the other hand, Carmen’s belief that she has blithely escaped the past is just as naive as Manon says it is. By making all sides of the characters and all components of the action so clear, Leblanc makes the ultimate tragedy all the more inevitable. This is a great production of a great play with an impact that is simply devastating. Bravo to TfT and all concerned!
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Marie-Hélène Fontaine, Mélanie Beauchamp, Janick Hébert, Guy Mignault.
©Marc Lemyre.
2011-02-10
À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou