Time travelling

>>Quebec of yesteryear

by AMY BARRATT

Watching Fenêtre sur le ciel at Théâtre du Rideau Vert, I started to regret having mildly trashed Picasso at the Lapin Agile last week. I guess everything's relative, because I'd rather see another 10 performances of Picasso than sit through even one act of Fenêtre again. The problems with this play begin with David Hare's script, originally titled Skylight and set in Britain, and continue with Simon Fortin's adaptation, which keeps the action in the '80s but moves it to Montreal. In either language, it's a kitchen sink blab-fest that cries out for interesting direction. It doesn't get it from Claude Maher.

The setting is the grotty apartment of Catherine (Linda Roy), a high-school teacher who apparently can't afford a comb. Her sparring partner for most of the play is her 50-ish ex-employer and ex-lover Pierre (Raymond Bouchard), a living symbol of capitalism. We need to identify with the characters in order to care about their conflict, and Fortin clearly had this in mind when he moved the setting from London to Montreal. But it's as though he and Maher thought all they had to do was make the characters Québécois and we'd automatically feel for them. Wrong.

Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but Pierre is like no one I know. I don't care how many restaurants you own in Montreal: unless maybe you're Brian Mulroney or some super-vedette, you don't retain a full-time chauffeur. Pierre, the fat cat restaurateur, does. I expected to identify more with Catherine (the filthy, single-glaze windows in her apartment made me nostalgic for my last place in NDG). But actress Linda Roy played her so crusty in the first act that I couldn't warm to her; then, when she finally did soften up, it happened instantaneously, triggered by I-know-not-what.

A third actor, Sébastien Delorme, as Pierre's son Éric, fidgets too much in his first scene, but succeeds in charming us in his second (and last) appearance. All of the actors are working hard, and no doubt sweating like pigs. (Catherine's flat is supposed to be cold, so everyone wears sweaters and coats throughout the play). But this pig just doesn't fly.

Fenêtre sur le ciel at Théâtre du Rideau Vert (4664 St-Denis), until October 18.