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<b>by Claude Guilmain, directed by Louise Naubert & Claude Guilmain
Théâtre la Tangente, Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, Toronto
November 16-19, 2017
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“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962
With his family saga <i>Americandream.ca</i>, Claude Guilmain enters territory seldom broached by Canadian playwrights. Though 90% of the Canadian population lives within 160 kilometres of the US border, Canadian drama seldom reflects that reality. Often in the way that Canadian drama is taught and in the way it is written, it feels as if there is an impermeable wall along the the world’s longest non-militarized border. In the attempt to capture that illusive spirit of Canadian identity, Canadian playwrights write as if our massive neighbour to the south were simply not there. This is understandable to a certain degree, but it also does not reflect Canadians’ everyday perception of the the world.
Guilmain counters this willful ignoring of the presence of the US, by creating a story where the fate of his characters is intimately bound up with events in the US. In so doing, Guilmain, a Franco-Ontarian writer, director and filmmaker, discovers more what it is to be Canadian than other dramatists do by avoiding the inevitable influence of the US on Canada.
Currently Théâtre français de Toronto is presenting the first two parts of <i>Americandream.ca</i>, a work that will eventually become a trilogy. This is the TfT’s first-ever presentation of a production by Toronto’s other francophone theatre company, Théâtre la Tangente of which Guilmain and Louise Naubert are the co-Artistic Directors. Partie 1 of the work is subtitled <i>Malaises</i>, and introduces us to the Cardinal family and the trials each suffers. The central occasion of this part is the 50th birthday party of Alain Cardinal (Pier Paquette) that gathers all six members of the clan together. Alain’s birthday has not gone well since it began by his being fired from his job in a company effort at downsizing after 25 years of service. When faced with being escorted out of his office, Alain had made the simultaneously comic and pathetic attempt to commit suicide by throwing himself out of an office window – except that the glass didn’t break and he has to make up an explanation for everyone why one side of his face is so bruised.
Alain’s older sister Maude (Louise Naubert) has also had a bad day. A biopsy after routine mammography turned up a lump that has turned out positive and she has scheduled a date for a double mastectomy. She does not tell this to her family, however. Instead, she says she plans to take a vacation to the South of France.
Claude (Bernard Meney), brother of Alain and Maude, also has something to hide. In order to make change for a beggar, he broke a $20 bill by buying a lottery ticket, something he would not ordinarily do. As it happens his ticket has won him $43 million dollars. He has not told anyone because he doesn’t know what effect it will have and, obsessive-compulsive as he is, he wants to be in control of whatever happens.
Alain’s neurotic anglophone wife Pat (Sasha Dominique) also has a secret. She has finally made a breakthrough with her therapist to discover the source of her anxiety. She apparently does not love her two daughters and never has. This is news, however, she can tell no one, least of all Alain.
Meanwhile, the two daughters of Maude have taken opposite paths in life. Émilie (Anie Richer), the younger, fights in the infantry with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. The reason why she is so committed to continuing to fight, the death of one particular Afghani girl, she reveals only to her older sister Brigitte.
Brigitte (Magali Lemèle), on the other hand, is a professor of American history who takes a particularly negative, left-leaning view of the US. In one lecture she tells her students the the US is all about selling. It sells its culture and its “dream” to the rest of the world. And to make sure other countries are favourably disposed to making their markets and resources open to the US, the US has intervened in their governments, managing coups to place pro-US leaders in charge.
At the very start of the play, Brigitte tells an unseen interviewer that she was inspired to change her major in university to American history on September 11, 2001, because she needed to find out how such an event could come about. Now she tells her students that she believes the 9/11 attacks where blowback from all the times the US had intervened in other countries’ politics. The US had, after all, trained Osama bin Laden, later founder of al-Qaeda, to help fight the Soviets when the USSR was at war in Afghanistan.
The mystery that haunts the three Cardinal siblings is the unsolved disappearance of their father and their grandfather. Once Alain is unemployed, he uses his free time to solve this mystery and he discovers the strange fact that his father’s truck was in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Even stranger he finds that both his father and his grandfather died in the same hospital in New Orleans on July 20, 1969, the day of the US moon landing.
Alain’s obsession with finding out what really happened disturbs the entire family, especially Pat, who thinks Alain is going crazy by buying into what seem to her bizarre conspiracy theories. At the same time, Alain’s quest does not prevent Brigitte from using it as material in a novel she is writing that happens to have the title <i>Americandream.ca</i>.
Partie 2 of the play is subtitled <i>Pax Americana</i>, taken from the commencement address delivered by John F. Kennedy at the American University in Washington, DC, on June 10, 1963. In the speech Kennedy said he wished for a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and sought America’s “complete disarmament” of nuclear weapons. By Partie 2, Émilie’s desire to return to Afghanistan can no longer be hidden and neither can Maude’s cancer and the following operation nor Alain’s all-consuming obsession with his father and grandfather. Claude continues to hide his recent wealth and Pat hides her psychological discovery, but Brigitte’s dubious habit of sleeping with her students seems to be on the point of becoming public. At the same time her book is published.
To reveal more would spoil the surprises in Partie 2. The prime flaw of this section is that the ending does not tie up all the threads of the plot. Since <i>Americandream.ca</i> will eventually become a trilogy, this is to be expected. But those unaware of this fact, may find that Partie 2 does not provide a satisfying conclusion given all that has gone before. We still want to see what happens when all six characters are aware of each of their secrets and what the final outcome will be of Alain’s investigation and Brigitte’s unethical behaviour.
What is particularly noteworthy about Guilmain’s play is how he has deliberately tied all of the major events to major events in American rather than Canadian history. This follows what, contrary to all the influence that CanCon can muster, is closer to the reality of of how Canadians view history. Much as some may wish it were not so, Kennedy’s assassination, the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and 9/11 are all more significant historical markers for Canadians than are any Canadian events in the 20th or 21st centuries. Indeed, because of the US’s position in the world they have become world landmarks in history.
Yet, tied as the action is to important US events, Guilmain’s depiction of the Cardinal family is different than the depiction of other families with secrets that one finds in American drama. Unlike Tracy Letts’s <i><a href="perma://BLPageReference/845CC72F-84E5-41FE-AEC1-3FDC100A55B9">August: Osage County</a></i> (2007) in which there is also a family gathering and a missing father, the interactions of Guilmain’s Cardinal family never devolve into shouting matches and irrevocable insults. Instead of proclaiming their opinions, the family hides them under small talk and would rather suffer silently than vent about them loudly. They do so for the particularly Canadian reasons of not wishing to disturb the others and not wishing to upset themselves. Thus, Guilmain’s dramaturgy has the Cardinals address the audience directly about their private feelings but only exchange meaningless pleasantries among each other. The disparity between the two is one of the plays’ main sources of comedy. Thus, at Alain’s birthday, most of the discussion centres on what duck tastes like rather than on anything important.
On the other hand, when a secret can no longer be concealed, it is generally received with understanding. Pat is angry at Alain because she has assumed he quit his job. When he finally tells her he was fired, she immediately becomes sympathetic.
Guilmain finds out more about the Canadian character by viewing it against American history than those who try to avoid it. The Canadarm is no match for having placed a man on the moon, but Canada also has no match for America’ spate of political assassinations.
The play is no star vehicle but strictly an ensemble piece. No one part is looms larger than the others as does the role of the matriarch in <i>August: Osage County</i>. Each character contributes to the plays’ common goal. It is impossible to single out any one of the six actors. They are all impeccable in creating their characters.
The play is also immaculately directed by Guilmain and Louise Naubert. Guilmain’s set consists of a rectangular playing area surrounded on three sides by sets of panels – four on each side and seven across the back – that can rotate to become entrances or close to become walls. When they form or are in the process of forming walls, they become screens for Guilmain’s projections. Sometimes these are static images; sometimes these are pieces of historic news footage about the events discussed. Significantly, Guilmain never allows the videos or still images to overwhelm the actors on stage except for an intended effect. One such effect is when Alain begins to investigate his family background on the internet and is inundated with information that spreads out across the sides and back wall of the set.
The directors ask for naturalistic performances but do not use naturalistic blocking. In the birthday party scene there is no table and no props excepts for the chairs the actors sit on, and these all face forward. Actors mime calling up- or downstairs from one room to another so well, you never are in doubt where each character is meant to be. As is usually the case, the minimalism of the staging only emphasizes the actors’ performances as sources of theatricality.
<i>Americandream.ca</i> is composed of a series of contrasting, tightly written scenes, each arriving at an ironic conclusion. This variety deriving from the characters’ six points of view and from the six parallel plots means that the three-hour running time passes by almost too quickly. Since the characters include one anglophone, the sections involving Pat or people speaking to her are in English, and one can only marvel at scenes like Alain’s birthday party where the five other characters rapidly switch back and forth between languages.
While it is yet incomplete, what Guilmain has constructed so far points to its becoming a major work of Canadian drama. If the American Dream consists in believing that everyone can reach the top through enough hard work, then Guilmain has already punctured that notion in multiple ways. Alain has worked at the same job for 25 years but is summarily made redundant. Claude does nothing but buy a lottery ticket and suddenly becomes rich.
Through numerous parallels and contrasts like these, Guilmain suggests that the notion of everyone being able to reach the top, whatever that might be, is not only a false but pernicious. What the two parts of his play suggest so far is that the ability to survive whatever fortune deals out, whether good or ill, is more important to living a good life than striving for an illusory summit where one can place oneself above everyone else. After seeing the first two parts so expertly written, stage and performed, one can hardly wait for part three.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Scene from <i>Americandream.ca</i>, Partie 1; Magali Lemèle, Bernard Meney, Louise Naubert, Sasha Dominique, Anie Richer and Pier Paquette; Pier Paquette as Alain and Sasha Dominique as Pat. ©2017 Marianne Duval.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://theatrefrancais.com">http://theatrefrancais.com</a>.
<b>2017-11-17</b>
<b>Americandream.ca, parties 1 & 2</b>