Yesterday's Russia may be today's QuebecThéâtre du Nouveau Monde's Gorky says a lot about the funny era we live inby GAËTAN CHARLEBOIS It is impossible to discuss the importance of the brilliant Théâtre du Nouveau Monde production of Maxim Gorky's Les Estivants (Dashiki or Summer Folk) without getting into politics.
I went from watching the news of the latest cuts to TV to the theatre, where for three blissful hours I watched and listened to people I knew very well--cottagers--heading to hell. I wondered if I was the only one reading this into the production until I reread the press release and noticed this quote from the play: "We live in a funny era. We talk all the time, we have dozens of opinions, hundreds of convictions. We take these, throw them away, but we do nothing because we do not really believe in anything." Suddenly the society around me, which delights and frustrates me so much, was revealed by a play that was written over 90 years ago. Could you ask for anything better? And look at the characters. I can pretty much bet you know someone on the list: a harried mother with too many children who never stops talking about her difficult life; the poet whose allusions are so obscure they could mean just about anything; the withered academic; the bohemian with not a care in the world; and the relentless joker who is, at the core, utterly miserable. And in the middle of this is a woman who speaks the truth. "Two years ago," she says at one point, "you spoke with the same conviction but for exactly the opposite position." (Think of all those ex-hippies who are now arch-conservatives.) You could hear your own breathing all through the 195 minutes of this lovingly treated production--it was the harrowing silence of recognition. It didn't hurt that director Serge Denoncourt had assembled a cast and design team that understood this play as profoundly as he did. Not a moment was overplayed, not a role miscast and the whole served to revive my waning love for Russian drama. Annick Bergeron, previously astounding in Tableau d'une exécution by Théâtre de l'Opsis last year, plays Varvara, the moral centre of the work. Louise Turcot, as the dried up professional whose life is transfused by the love of a young man, has a similar subtle transformation and is a joy to watch as well. Michel Beaulieu's lighting beautifully fills Michel Gauthier's wonderfully woody set and Luc J. Béland's costumes are perfect for the the period. But the biggest achievement must be shared by the director and his adaptor/translator Pierre-Yves Lemieux. Lemieux took Gorky's five-hour-and-some opus and made it sing without resorting to the tiring (and on its way to clichéd) conceit of "reworking" (i.e. rewriting) the play. This is Gorky. It is Gorky understood. It is Gorky that never forgets that "Gorky" is a pen name which means "bitter." But, especially, it is Gorky that whispers and then screams to the rafters. Les Estivants by Maxim Gorky is at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde to April 12. Check theatre listings for showtimes |
The characters are a gang of talky pseudointellectuals who, despite their best intentions, are destroying their country. It's not tough to make the leap from them to a Bouchard government which blathers about the future and culture while making deep cuts to education.