Strange odyssey

>> Surprise commercial success, controversy and women’s juices made Montreal theatre in 2001

by AMY BARRATT

As 2001 began, Steve Galluccio’s coming-out play, Mambo Italiano, translated by Michel Tremblay, was playing to packed houses at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe. As I write this, the original English version, which premiered Sept. 25 at the Centaur, is still running. The scheduled four-week run has been extended to a total of 13, an unheard-of holdover for an English show in this town. Its progress is only being halted by the Christmas season, and there is apparently still a possibility of a further extension in January. It will eventually have to make way for Freeze, a new play about the ice storm, scheduled to open Jan. 29.
As I wrote in my review of Mambo Italiano last fall, whether critics like it or not (I don’t, particularly) is immaterial at this point: the show is a phenomenon. Its success here assures that it will have a life beyond our little island. What artistic director, what board of directors, could resist the promise of such a hit? Expect productions all across Canada and maybe even into the States in the next couple of years. Meanwhile, the French version will be reprised at Duceppe starting July 31, 2002, and Galluccio is working on the screenplay for a film version.
Centaur also had a popular and, for the most part, critical success early this year with Wit. The Saidye brought us a beautiful production of After the Dance, by Terence Rattigan, by the Montreal Young Company, and an appropriately bleak Threepenny Opera, in Yiddish. They began this season with a Toronto production called Chekhov’s Shorts, based on some of the master’s short stories, which I loved.
Other shows that might make a top 10 list, if I were making a top 10 list, include: Carbone 14’s Silences et cris; Le Rire de la mer, by Les Éternels Pigistes; The Slip-knot and This I Know, both from the Fringe; Soulfishing’s Crackwalker, and Théâtre de la Manufacture’s La Reine de beauté de Leenane.

Critics dissed!
Despite some fine shows, 2001 may be remembered more for controversy than artistic merit. In March, the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques sent out an invitation to the media to meet with Robert Lepage, whose latest piece, La Face cachée de la lune, was to be produced in June at the festival. Shortly thereafter, they sent out another release, cancelling the press conference. It seems that when Lepage got word that all of the city’s theatre critics had been invited, he blew a gasket, demanding that the FTA un-invite three of them: Robert Lévesque (Radio Canada and Ici), Luc Boulanger (Voir), and Stéphane Baillargeon (Le Devoir). When the FTA explained to the artiste that it was an open press conference and they couldn’t prevent any individual from attending, Lepage informed them that in that case, he wouldn’t be attending. Lepage had the luxury of throwing such a tantrum because his reputation guarantees that tickets for his shows will sell whether he makes nice with the press or not. His behaviour is all the more incomprehensible given the flip side of that equation: no critic has the power to sink a Lepage show. Chalk it up to thin skin and a famously prickly relationship with the Montreal press.
In June, the Fringe Festival was engulfed in controversy over a show called Car Stories, which took place in a series of parked cars (three audience members at a time watched the action going on in the front). Due to complaints and the erratic behaviour of the director-organizer of the show, it was shut down by Fringe boss Jeremy Hechtman. The individual, who shall remain nameless, proceeded to terrorize Fringe-goers both in person and on-line.
Elsewhere this year, what playwright Laura Mitchell memorably referred to as “women’s juices” were centre stage first with a student production of The Vagina Monologues, and then in Mom’s the Word, a Just for Laughs hit about having babies.
Finally, who could forget Cheval Théâtre, a ludicrous spectacle of noble beasts being made to run around and around the equivalent of an exercise wheel, and acrobats repeatedly falling off their mounts?
Ahh, 2001. Bring on 2002. <<