Sensory delight

>> Gilles Maheu triumphs with Silences et cris

by AMY BARRATT

Oh. My. God. That's my review of Carbone 14's Silences et cris. Oh my God.

What's that? You need 500 more words? Sure. What are words again?

That's right, Gilles Maheu's latest creation, currently running at Usine C, has practically rendered me speechless.

Silences et cris is not one of those shows that comes preceded by a whole lot of printed material explaining it. What it does instead--from the first note of music, from the first glimmer of light--is reach out and lay its hands on you. You know that line from Jerry Maguire, "You had me from hello"? Silences et cris had me from hello and, throughout an hour and 20 minutes of sensory delights, never lost me.

Even if the show itself were lame (it isn't), you'd have to go see it for the design alone. I don't want to ruin it for you by describing too much. Suffice it to say that Maheu and designer Anick La Bissonière have dreamed up something full of surprises that requires a complete reconstruction of the Usine C space. My unbridled admiration goes out to the team of technicians who made it work. Alain Lortie's lighting is a thing of beauty.

The minimal text includes the line, "Nos vies ne sont que des silences et des cris," and it's that deceptively simple idea that this piece attempts to dramatize. The original music by Didier Dumoutier and Claude Lamothe has a gypsy feel to it, as do the costumes by Georges Lévesque and Véronic Denis, but these characters could be anyone living in the modern world. The silences of the title are those of the powerless, the imprisoned, the murdered. But they also refer to those who have voices but choose not to speak, who choose to ignore the suffering of others. The cries, similarly, are both the screams of those who suffer, and the noise of everyday life that allows us to block out their pain. Maheu doesn't present these ideas in a way that makes you feel guilty. He merely opens up a space that allows you to think better, dare I say nobler, thoughts than you normally get a chance to in your busy life.

After two years with the pop musical Notre Dame de Paris, it's good to see Maheu back at the helm of Carbone 14 where he belongs. If we expected him to be rusty or unsure of himself after time away, the opposite is true. The work seems energized, like a racehorse that's been reigned in, exploding from the gate. I wondered if I would detect any influence of the middlebrow Notre Dame on Silences et cris; although the two share an appreciation for the elements of spectacle, this is nothing new for the director and company that brought us Le Dortoir and Les Ames mortes, among others. Maheu's work has never been arty in the sense of only appealing to an intellectual elite. Though never cheap or shallow, it is always accessible. Not arty, but art. :

>>>

Champagne flowed in the shadow of the Bonaventure Expressway one recent sunny afternoon and yellow police tape was cut to inaugurate the Griffintown Theatre. Dead Ducks, a memory play by William R. Young (Beyond Catholic, Tintin Untold), is the premiere production in what the peripatetic infinitheatre hopes to make a permanent home. Check it out until June 3 at 156 Ann St., west of the Bonaventure. Info: 987-1774.

Silences et cris at Usine C until May 26. Info: 521-4198 or 790-1245