by AMY BARRATT

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This has been a banner year for new English drama in Montreal. Buoyed perhaps by Centaur’s all-Montreal season, our independent companies have outdone themselves with one new play after another. I anticipate a long list of nominees when it comes time to give out the MECCAs next fall. It’s lucky for all the other candidates that we already gave Best New Text to Elyse Gasco’s Bye Bye Baby last year.

I reviewed this show when Imago first produced it in 2004 [“Hello and hallelujah,” Nov. 24, 2004] and, frankly, I think I nailed it at the time. That review is archived on the Mirror Web site if you’re interested [www.montrealmirror.com/2004/111804/theatre.html].

Still, I was curious to see how this play, currently rounding out the Centaur season, had evolved over the intervening 18 months. As directed by Clare Schapiro, it still has the wonderful eclectic feel, mixing realistic two-person scenes with monologues and dream sequences, but the story of a woman’s search for her birth mother feels tighter now, more focused.

What I retained from my first viewing of the play was a series of visual impressions. This time, the strong visuals are still there, but I came away more haunted by the narrative.

Ana Cappelluto has given the show a cold, institutional look, symbolizing the bureaucracy that Elle (Alison Darcy) is up against in her search.

The play still has two “image” characters. One is Elle’s childhood imaginary friend who grows up to be her darker, more daring side. It’s a difficult role, but one that also has some of the play’s funniest lines. They might work better if France Rolland would drop the bravado occasionally and just throw a line away. The other “image” is the elusive birth mother. This character can never come out of the shadows because she has chosen to stay silent. Anita La Selva nevertheless makes the birthmother sympathetic, largely through movement. Gasco doesn’t give any character short shrift; even the adoptive mother, who initially is a bit caricaturized, is breaking our hearts by the end.

Gasco goes out of her way to say that she lucked out in terms of her adoptive family. The search is in no way about replacing them, but about answering this great glaring question: where do I come from? The play is a prime example of telling a fiercely personal story and finding it has universal resonance. If you are an adoptee—male or female—you must not miss this show, but you don’t have to have any first-hand experience of adoption to be moved by this story, or to laugh at Gasco’s sharp, sarcastic humour, turned most often on herself.

When Bye Bye Baby closes May 28, we will not have heard the last of it. This fine Canadian play, born in Montreal, is destined to be produced across the country and beyond.

Come critique the critic!

After all these years of judging everybody else, I am crossing to the other side of the footlights for four nights. May 24–27 I’ll be in the salle intime of the Théâtre Prospero (1370 Ontario E.) performing my “solo show with show tunes,” No Lesbians in Musical Theatre. Also on the bill is astonishing singer and hilarious goof Gabrielle Maes, performing her solo show Bedraggled. Cost is $10, 526-6582.

Bye Bye Baby, to May 28 at Centaur
(453 St-François-Xavier), 288-3161

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