Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
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by François Archambault, translated by Bobby Theodore, directed by Joel Greenberg
Tarragon Theatre and Studio 180, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
March 9-April 10, 2016
Édouard: “You will be condemned to live in an eternal present like me”
When you learn that the play You Will Remember Me is about Alzheimer’s disease, you may wonder how many plays or movies about the subject you can take. On film we’ve had Iris (2001), Away From Her (2007) and Still Alice (2014) and on stage Florian Zeller’s The Father (2012) in Paris, London and now New York. Fortunately, François Archambault’s play does not focus on the onset of the disease or the gradual dismay of those caring for a loved one. Instead, You Will Remember Me (Tu te souviendras de moi) begins with a central character acknowledging that he has the condition and uses the disease to shine a light on the willed or unwilled forgetfulness that characterizes modern everyday life.
The play begins with Édouard (R.H. Thomson) and his wife Madeleine (Nancy Palk) on a talk show where Édouard is supposed to talk about his disease but instead condemns the rise of the internet and social media as the fall of civilization. Madeleine reminds the audience that 15 minutes later Édouard won’t even remember he was on the show. Édouard is a history professor, public figure and a long-time Quebec sovereigntist, but his marriage to Madeleine has always been shaky and she has already reached the point where she needs a break from caring for him. She therefore takes Édouard to stay with his daughter Isabelle (Kimwun Perehinec) and her partner Patrick (Mark McGrinder). Isabelle, a news producer, has to be away on assignment, but Patrick, an unemployed nurse, says he will take care of Édouard.
On the surface Archambault’s play is about how both the sufferer and the caregivers cope with effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Much to the benefit of the play, Archambault gives Édouard as sense of humour about himself and the disease that considerably lightens the mood of the action. Édouard’s ability to joke about his own failure to remember allows us to laugh at numerous situations that would otherwise be too painful.
Yet, Archambault’s play is not merely about a disease but about forgetting in general. The title is literally true. Édouard may not remember who is own family is, but they will remember him. Or, in the case of Madeleine, she will remember Édouard despite her best attempts to forget him. She leaves Édouard with Isabelle for that very reason. On a more comic level Madeleine doesn’t remember that the1966 hit song by Marc Gélinas (which is also the title of the play) is her and Édouard’s song even though the girl in the lyrics is called Madeleine.
Later, Patrick leaves Édouard with Bérénice to forget Édouard at least for one evening and when confronted with his action leaves the house rather than face up to what he has done. For her part, Isabelle has covered so many disasters for the news that she forgotten how to be compassionate. Even Édouard blames himself with consciously trying, long before the onset of his disease, to forget Nathalie rather than attempting to cope with her death. And Bérénice herself being only 19 has learned nothing of the events that are of the greatest importance to Édouard. She doesn’t even know who René Lévesque was or the significance of the Parti Québécois victory in 1976.
In his more lucid moments, Édouard as a historian sees Bérénice’s ignorance of Québec’s history as a symptom of a larger malady. He sees that the province is in the process of forgetting its own history and if it forgets that it will lose its identity. But, as he notes, that has happened many times before in history and Québec will merely join the list of nations that disappeared through assimilation or were forcibly erased as were the Aztec and Inca Empires by the Spanish.
On an even more general level, Édouard as a historian sees that society itself is unwittingly placing itself in the same position as an Alzheimer’s patient. A warning that Édouard delivers twice during the play is that the information revolution also marks the downfall of society. In his view, the internet and social media have allowed for the “democratization of stupidity” where every individual has become a news source. We are now bombarded with so much information, the trivial drowning out the important, that sorting the latter from the huge mass of the former is becoming impossible. The result is that we can’t remember what was important only five minutes after we learn of it. This, Édouard says, puts us in the same position as an Alzheimer’s patient in the last phase of the disease when he forgets what happened just five minutes earlier. As he says, “You are condemning yourselves to live in an eternal present like me”.
In this way Archambault expands the meaning of Édouard’s disease from the personal to the familial, the political and the societal. It is a provocative and thought-provoking insight to which Archambault gives a further twist in that Édouard broadcasts his message about the dangers of personal media via personal media, specifically YouTube. And in a further twist, Édouard’s most dedicated caregiver turns out to be Bérénice, who overcomes her social media addiction through person-to-person interaction with Édouard.
Archambault thus with a simple premise has created an immensely rich and complex drama. Joel Greenberg’s insightful direction makes all the thematic layers of the play clear to see while drawing nuanced performances from the entire cast. R.H. Thomson is simply wonderful as Édouard. He not only distinguishes Édouard’s moments of clarity from his moments of confusion, but shows us that there are multiple levels of each. He gives Édouard’s sense of humour a sense of childish surprise and foolishness at the start that gradually darkens so that we perceive the despair underneath. He shows that Édouard is conscious that Bérénice is not really Nathalie, yet his willingness to act as if she is is heart-breaking. After the play is over, we will certainly remember R.H. Thomson.
Nancy Palk seems invigorated by playing such a different kind of role as Madeleine. She demonstrates that Madeleine, too, has a sense of humour that has helped her cope, but that the woman has now reached the end of her ability to cope any more. She makes Madeleine’s behaviour a mixture of sensibility, irresponsibility and frustration. It is a superb portrait of a woman at the brink of despair.
Kimwun Perehinec, too seldom seen on stage, shows that Isabelle really is, as Patrick says, just like her mother. In the argument the two have about caring for Édouard it is as if the younger and older versions of the same women are lashing out at each other. Yet, if Perehinec has Isabelle begin as harsh and uncompromising, she also shows how Isabelle’s anger at Patrick and both parents progressively softens as she becomes more able to see the implications that Édouard’s disease has for all of them.
Mark McGrinder’s Patrick is the most low-key presence after Édouard. He gives Patrick the hangdog look of worthlessness that being unemployed gives him in face of his high-powered partner. He is responsible for a turning point in the action when Patrick, tired of answering Édouard’s questions of who he is and what he does, begins to invent answers to see if Édouard can tell if he is bluffing. McGrinder does this expertly with an expression mingling worry with pleasure. This episode introduces the game-playing that Patrick’s daughter will later take up and shows where Bérénice may have learned this sort of playfulness.
Newcomer Michela Cannon makes a fine debut as Bérénice. She may play the girl’s resentment of babysitting an adult too strongly in her first scene, but she plays Bérénice’s growing appreciation of Édouard with such warmth and tenderness that she becomes the most compassionate of the three adults who care for Édouard. The only flaw in the play is that Archambault does not make quite clear how Bérénice so overcomes her initial dislike of Édouard that she returns to the house to see him even when she has been banned from doing so.
You Will Remember Me is one of the finest new Canadian plays in years. Archambault takes an overused subject and makes it entirely new. He investigates not only the life of an Alzheimer’s patient but forces us to see in that life a reflection of ourselves. How often do we hear that we should live for the moment? Why then do we fear Alzheimer’s so much when the sufferer in its last stages really does live only in the present moment? Édouard’s warnings may seem like the rantings of old man who sees that his time is past, but Archambault gives Édouard’s message undeniable resonance that can’t be ignored. Archambault’s play appeals both to the emotions and the intellect and certainly fires one’s desire to see more of his work on stage.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Nancy Palk and R.H. Thomson; R.H. Thomson as Édouard; R.H. Thomson, Michela Cannon, Nancy Palk, Kimwun Perehinec and Mark McGrinder. ©2016 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit http://tarragontheatre.com.
2016-03-18
You Will Remember Me