Enemy within

>> Visually striking Le Laquais drags and confuses

by AMY BARRATT

It is inevitable that Le Laquais, the latest production from Théâtre Deuxième Realité, will be compared to last year's Salle No. 6 as well as to the company's stunning Hamlet, which was voted best production of 1998-99 by the Association des critiques de théâtre de Montréal. Some of the adjectives I used to describe Hamlet--stylized, fluid, playful--can also be applied to Le Laquais, but while the former was a revelation, the latter is more like an awkward introduction. Le Laquais, like Salle No. 6, is an adaptation of a long story by Chekhov, "An Anonymous Story."

The story goes like this: an intense young man named Stepane (Patrice Gagnon) is hired as servant ("laquais" is roughly "footman," or liveried servant) to Georges (Vitali Makarov), a playboy whose government job involves "sending revolutionaries to Siberia." Only Stepane is not what he seems. He is in fact a revolutionary, or "terrorist" as the text would have it, sent to assassinate the enemy of the revolution.

The very night that Stepane enters into Georges' service, the playboy's married lover, Lisa (Karyne Lemieux), appears and announces that she has left her husband and is moving in with Georges.

Georges, lacking the courage to explain that when he said he loved her it was only what he tells all the girls, unhappily finds himself a defacto married man. Lisa's presence creates an exterior obstacle to Stepane's assassination plan, but he also seems to be having an interior struggle; weeks go by and the master remains unharmed.

Translated by Anne-Catherine Lebeau, the story has been adapted for the stage by the company's artistic director, Alexandre Marine. His usual design team has created another visually striking show. Valentina Komolova's set consists of moveable pieces manipulated by the actors to create numerous settings, some realistic, some dreamlike. (I must admit they lost me when the aligned flats seemed to create an enormous bar code.) Spike Lyne's lighting interacts with the set to create stunning effects.

In a strong cast, the two women stand out. Lemieux has some perfect Stanislavskian moments as the mistress of the household who is frightened of the servants. Hélène Bourgeois-Leclerc is riveting as Polia, the nymphomaniac maid, who is incensed at being displaced in the master's bed by the intruder, Lisa.

Gagnon's tightly wound Stepane keeps you on edge, especially knowing about the revolver in his suitcase. But the emotional change that the character supposedly undergoes in the play is revealed only by his words. We don't see it happening. Ultimately, this "inconnu" is the least interesting character in the piece.

Despite the strong non-textual elements, which also include bizarre choreographies by the cast and a funhouse-inspired soundtrack by Marine, this seems like a show that is too tied to its text. You can't help wondering why a company that whittled Hamlet down to 90 minutes needs two-and-a-half hours for a relatively obscure Chekhov story.

Of course, that relative obscurity is part of the reason. Marine can not assume, as he could with Hamlet, that the audience already knows the story. This production perhaps inevitably becomes about what's going to happen next, rather than about an interpretation of what's going on. In that context, Marine's directorial flourishes obfuscate more than they enlighten.

Le Laquais, to Oct. 21 at Théâtre La Chapelle, 842-7738