A boy and his mother

>> Centaur gives us the pleasure of seeing them again

by AMY BARRATT

Maybe I was just a cranky-pants.

When Michel Tremblay's For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again opened in English at the Centaur in September '98, I was a little disappointed. But I admitted at the time that my opinion was coloured by having seen the French-language premiere--which I adored--a month before.

Next week, we all get a second chance to assess the English-language production--starring Nicola Cavendish and Dennis O'Connor and directed by Gordon McCall--when it briefly returns to the Centaur stage. I've been referring with a smirk to a "triumphant return," but given the reception the show has enjoyed in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Vancouver et al., the company has every right to march back into town, banners waving.

Critics everywhere have fallen over themselves praising Cavendish's performance as Nana, a version of Tremblay's mother. It is certainly a tour-de-force.

But let us for a moment consider poor Dennis O'Connor, relegated to the far less colourful, relentlessly supporting role of the son. It can't be easy for him to maintain his good humour in the face of reviews which mention his performance as an afterthought (if they mention it at all). If he's smart, he's taking that feeling and channelling it back into the character of the son who can never live up to his mother's flamboyance. Relations between the two characters reminds me of another play seen at the Saidye a couple of years ago, My Mother's Courage. Again, the two main characters were a mother and son and it was the actress playing the mother who received all the accolades. In that case, though, while the actress playing the mother remained constant, the production had gone through several sons by the time it played here because actors didn't enjoy playing second fiddle. O'Connor should be commended for hanging in there where frailer egos might have balked.

By now, anyone who's interested in theatre knows that For the Pleasure is Tremblay's tribute to his first influence and inspiration, his part-Cree, Saskatchewan-born mother. As Tremblay told a Victoria journalist last January when the play opened there, in writing this play he gave himself permission to "think of the funny bone of my mother instead of to describe her dark side like I did in my novels."

In '98, I complained that McCall's direction emphasized the comic elements of the play to the point where, when the action did get serious, it didn't fit. The actors seemed uncomfortable with strong emotion and that carried over to the audience. At least one other critic (Barbara Crook in Ottawa) agreed with me that the penultimate scene wasn't the heartbreaker it should have been in this production. That particular scene is as emotional, even melodramatic, as any of the French novels Nana so adores. It needs to be played with garment-ripping conviction. A year and a half ago, this production wasn't willing to go there. But Cavendish and O'Connor have spent a lot of time in their characters' skins since that original run, so who knows where their performances may have travelled. It's worth a trip to the Centaur to see.

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, March 21 to April 2 at Centaur Theatre, 8pm, Tues-Sat, Sunday matinée; 288-1229