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by Guillaume Corbeil, translated by Steven McCarthy, directed by Claude Poissant

Théâtre français de Toronto and Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, Toronto

February 14-March 5, 2017, in English

March 21-25, 2017, in French

“This is me breathing”

This is me at a play called Five Faces for Evelyn Frost.  This is me wondering when the play is ever going be like a normal play.  This is me realizing that this is an entirely new type of theatrical experience.  This is me at home trying to write a review about the play.  This is me trying to imitate the style of the play in my first paragraph.  This is me wishing I had photos to accompany each of my sentences.  This is me glad that I don’t have photos to accompany each sentence because that would be an invasion of the actors’ privacy.  This is me realizing that I’m glad I don’t have photos because it would be an invasion of my privacy.  This is me bowled over that such a young playwright could write such an amazing piece of theatre.  This me in awe of a cast who effortlessly acted what must be one the hardest scripts ever to memorize.  This is me deciding to end this attempt at imitating the play’s style.

Five Faces for Evelyn Frost which premiered under a different title in 2012 in Montreal when the playwright was 32 is a piece of theatre unlike any you have ever seen.  There have been many plays about the effects of social media like Canadian Dave Deveau’s tagged (2013) about cyberbullying or American Jennifer Haley’s The Nether (2013) about internet role-playing games.  Corbeil’s play is the first play I know of to use the language and structure of communication on social media as the language and structure of his play. 

The 70-minute long experience seems to be divided into five movements.  The first begins when five actors – Laurence Dauphinais, Steffi DiDomenicantonio, Tara Nicodemo, Nico Racicot and Alex Weiner – enter, stand in front of the stage and say hello directly to the audience.  Each then gives the answers to what sounds like a standard questionnaire on a dating site or a Facebook page.  Each states their sex, birthdate, favourite music, song stuck in their head, favourite clothing, favourite hangout, favourite clothing brands, favourite hobbies and what they would do if they were given $5000 to spend immediately.  The only thing all five have in common is that each is single.  They do not say whether they are looking for anyone.

Initially the group does not react when one of them recites the contents of the profile.  Gradually, they do and we come to see that this group of “friends” knows its members almost exclusively by their profiles.  In the second phase of the show, the five sit on chairs at the back of the stage and, as if in competition, reel off their favourite movies and books with each speaking in turns and others grunting approval or disapproval.  Just when we begin to wonder whether the “play” is going to remain just a series of lists, Steffi DiDomenicantonio (the characters have no names) suddenly shouts “Stop”, and for the first time the characters actually speak to each other.  Four plan to meet at a club.  Laurence Dauphinais says that she needs to be by herself and can’t go.

At this point the third and longest phase of the show begins.  In sequence the remaining four describe photos they have taken on their club night as corresponding photos of Jean-François Brière are projected on the back wall.  Each of the photos is introduced by the phrase “This is me ...” and, unsurprisingly the vast majority of the photos are selfies.  The photos in this section all appear to confirm the personality of each of the characters that we gathered from their profiles and movie and book choices and favourite causes.  Tara Nicodemo is a would-be sophisticate who likes only the most reliably popular products and people.  Steffi DiDomenicantonio is more of a free spirit who is not stuck up as Tara seems to be.  Nico Racicot is a would-be intellectual and art lover whose sexual orientation is undefined.  Alex Weiner is heterosexual and proudly independent of trends.                                  

This section flits from one actor to the next in dizzying succession as each shows photos that often include people from other character's’ photos.  Laurence Dauphinais includes selfies of what she is doing at home.  Each of the four partiers encounter the mysterious Evelyn Frost.  All have heard of her and seem in awe of her, although other than this we learn absolutely nothing about her.  As the sequence of “this is me” statements and photos becomes faster, Nico Racicot suddenly shouts out “Enough”.  He is tired of pretending to be someone he isn’t.

This introduces the fourth phase of the show where “this is me” statements and photos continue but show entirely different aspects of the five characters than the profiles and first group of selfies would have led us to believe.  This section has two parts.  In the first, all five provide an alternate impression of their personalities and actions that still looks favourable to themselves.  This eventually gives way to the five contradicting even this view to present, still in the “this is me” format, sordid, unflattering views of themselves that are completely at odds

with the initial impressions they gave from their profiles and initial round of selfies.  Significantly, few of the group’s statements are documented with selfies making us wonder whether they are now simply speaking about themselves privately but unable to conceive of other language than internet-speak.

The fourth section ceases when one of the five stops contributing for reasons I will not reveal.  The fifth and final section is perhaps the most mind-blowing of all.  I will refrain from describing it in order to keep it a surprise, but I will say that it speculates quite chillingly that the mania for self-documentation on social media may have replaced actual one-to-one interactions and personal experiences between people.

Contrary to what we might think when it begins, Five Faces for Evelyn Frost is a profound indictment of the effect of social media on those who use it.  The play’s first section suggests that a personality can adequately be summed up by answers to an unscientific questionnaire preoccupied with the superficialities of a person’s life.  The second section details group judgementalism of the choices that each makes, again with the assumption that a personality can be reduced to a collection of likes.  Corbeil suggests that the very way that internet sites attempt to define people through categories destroys any holistic view of what an individual is by atomizing them into a series of trivial compartments. 

The final three selfie sections first critique the impulse to document every action on social media with the underlying notion that only if this documentation is shared does it become real.  The formula” this is me” highlights the way that social media both degrades individuality while increasing narcissism.  Max-Otto Fauteux’s set design reflects this literary since once it has been cleared of all the clothing covering its surface it is reveal to be a huge mirror.

Corbeil then goes on to expose the unreliability of of internet questionnaire profiles and of selfies.  Besides the artificiality of it all, why should we believe that the persona a social media user creates in words or pictures is actually true?  In the play Corbeil shows that all five have created false, positive personae to represent the kind of people they would like to be rather than the severely troubled people that they really are.  Corbeil suggests that social media addiction has replaced not only face-to-face contact but the memory of one’s own life and others’.   

Though written in 2012 Corbeil’s play has only become more relevant in detailing how those who live life more in the virtual world than the real world, sharing their every moment with “friends”, can actually experience more anxiety and depression since their connections to other people are ultimately not real.  Besides that, as Corbeil shows, the superficiality that internet formats encourage also brings about an anonymous and harmful judgementalism.

Under director Claude Poissant, who has been involved with the play from the very beginning, the cast of five give one of the most amazing examples of ensemble acting I have ever seen.  The phases though deriving from internet-speak become a kind of poetry and the the group of five deliver the play musically as a choral drama, where each line must be delivered with the utmost exactitude or risk throwing off the whole rhythm of the piece.  It is impossible to single any one of the five out since their parts are all equal and they are each all equally expert at performing them.  How they were able to memorize a text that consists almost entirely of extensive lists is mind-boggling.  Even more mind-boggling is that the same cast will perform the work in French from March 21 to 25 after its run in English from February 14 to March 5.

This co-production between that Théâtre français de Toronto and Canadian Stage is a major event.  It introduces Toronto audiences to a playwright who created a theatre piece unlike any you have ever seen before.  Translator Steven McCarthy has not merely translated Corbeil’s play, originally titled Cinq visages pour Camille Brunelle, but has had to revise all the references in the play to suit the relocation of the action to Toronto from Montreal.  Everything about the production – the text, the acting, the design, the projections, the lighting – works in concert to enhance the plays’s impact.  Anyone interested in seeing a play that conceives of theatre in an entirely different way from what has come before should be sure not to miss it.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: (from top) Laurence Dauphinais, Nico Racicot,Tara Nicodemo, Steffi DiDomenicantonio and Alex Weiner; Alex Weiner, Laurence Dauphinais, Steffi DiDomenicantonio, Tara Nicodemo and Nico Racicot; Laurence Dauphinais. ©2017 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.canadianstage.com.