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Same great taste >> Teesri Duniya goes after French audience by AMY BARRATT
Strip away language and culture, politics and religion, and that's the fundamental message of Rahul Varma's play Counter Offence, now playing in French as L'Affaire Farhadi at La Licorne. Few plays have caused as much of a stir in the English theatre community as Counter Offence, which dramatized a head-on collision between conjugal violence and racism. The Teesri Duniya production premiered in March 1996 and was re-mounted in September 1997, when the recent O.J. Simpson verdict only increased its relevance. For a local play written in English to make the leap to the French side is virtually unheard of, but La Licorne's resident company, Théâtre de la Manufacture, prides itself on presenting diverse texts from around the world to French-speaking Montreal audiences. Pierre Legris has done a faithful translation, with minimal "adaptations"--such as turning a Jamaican (English-speaking) social worker into a Haitian (French-speaking) one. The young wife, Shazia (Micheline Dahlander), has been schooled in French under Bill 101 and speaks it perfectly. Her Indian-born parents, on the other hand, continue to speak English in this version. L'Affaire Farhadi is theatre of social change, wrapped up in the familiar genre of the police thriller. We learn at the outset that Shapoor Farhadi (Cas Anvar), a wife-beater, is dead. The play is composed of a series of flashbacks, ostensibly designed to reconstruct the events leading up to his murder and the discovery of the killer. But Varma is clearly more interested in the conjugal violence plot-line than in the whodunit aspect. The courtroom scenes interspersed throughout the play seem to be there mainly to remind the audience and Varma himself of the fact that Shapoor is dead. Various characters appear at intervals, madly justifying their actions to unseen lawyers and judges, each as if he or she is the accused. But, since in an actual trial there can be only one defendant, all these cries of "I didn't kill him!" feel contrived. Nevertheless, L'Affaire Farhadi is a tightly crafted little piece with a gripping plot. Having seen Counter Offence in English, I had looked forward to seeing a different production of it at La Licorne, but what I got was, except for language, almost a carbon copy of the original. Director Jack Langedijk was brought over from the English version and given a "collaborator" in Paul Lefebvre, whose input appears to have been mostly in the form of on-the-spot translation. The look of the play--set, lighting, even the blocking--is remarkably similar to what we saw in '97. In addition, three of the eight cast members--Anvar, Prasun Lala (Moolchand) and Ranjana Jha (Shafiqa)--have been with the play since its debut. Still, if you missed Counter Offence in English, this stylish mise-en-scène, like a mid-season re-run, will be "new to you." The level of acting in this production is probably the highest so far in this play. Michel Daigle is wonderfully subtle as police chief Perreault, and his passing resemblance to Jacques Parizeau is a nice little in-joke. Mireille Métellus is dynamite as the social worker, Rosemarie Janvier. The two young leads are solid, but both have problems with hair. Dahlander's obscures her face for the first half of the play, until she finally ties it back, and Anvar can't seem to stop playing with his curly dreamboat bangs. L'Affaire Farhadi runs to March 6 at La Licorne, 4559 Papineau. 523-2246. Note: running time is 90 minutes, no intermission
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There's nothing lower than a wife-beater.