B-movie bliss

>> Agromorphobia is an over-the-top delight

by AMY BARRATT

For the second year in a row, theatregoers can sit back, enjoy the view from the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui terrasse, drink something tall and cool and watch a hilariously over-the-top play. This time there are even tasty treats.

Last August, a company with the phlegmy acronym ARRGL! presented an adaptation of the B-movie The Fly, titled Tsé-tsé. This time, the same author-director, Olivier Choinière, brings us Agromorphobia, an utterly original story that's still very much grounded in the B-movie idiom.

Choinière is a modest young man who doesn't like to take credit for his writing. He prefers to create fictitious, usually female, authors for his work. A biography of Elvire O'Connor, the ostensible writer of this piece, is included in the program and is a tiny work of art in its own right. The same fertile imagination has given us a B-movie take on genetically modified organisms in Agromorphobia.

The action takes place on a remote island spa where mad scientist Gronome (Jean-Sébastien Lavoie) has been performing experiments in hybridization. A world-famous florist named Flora (Geneviève Filion) has come to the island with her servant and friend Dumaurier (Marc Beaupré) and her gormless nephew Soni (Michel Lavoie), to take a cure. Soni shows up, to his aunt's consternation, with a highly pregnant prostitute, Sonia (Catherine Allard), in tow. They all make the crossing to the island with Gronome's faithful servant Marcil (Marcelo Arroyo).

At first, everything seems idyllic, but, naturally, suspicious things begin to occur. Choinière follows the B-movie formula quite faithfully except that he exaggerates the sexual imagery to a point that would never have made it past '50s censors.

Gronome also has a moonie-eyed daughter, Végéta (Simone Chevalot, who played the perfect '50s housewife in Tsé-tsé). Even the audience plays a character: a seething mass named Compostos that periodically, with the help of cue cards, demands to be fed.

And in fact, its pleas are heard: several times during the performance waiters come around with hors d'oeuvres whose ingredients bear some connection to the emerging storyline.

Some of the advance press for this show made me worry that it might take itself too seriously, but there's absolutely no hint of that here. If there is a message in Agromorphobia about the evils of health fanaticism or science run amok, it in no way gets in the way of a good story.

What makes the outdoor setting so perfect is that it's reminiscent of a drive-in. Étienne Boucher's lighting carves a little space for the production out of the vastness of the night. Marie-Pierre Fleury and Anna Pollack's design is both lush and appropriately cheesy. The cast throws itself with religious zeal into the quirky material and, for the most part, the tone they achieve is right on. Allard is unforgettable as the world-weary Sonia.

The exotic snacks can be washed down with a drink from the bar set up for the occasion by Bily Kun. Even on the most sweltering nights there tends to be a breeze up on the roof, so all in all, Agromorphobia is a very pleasant summer theatre experience.

Agromorphobia through Aug. 25, on the terrasse of Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui (follow the arrow to the door on the right of the theatre's main entrance), $15. Info: 844-2044