Let kitsch rule

>> Looking forward to a theatrical season of glitz, glam and good times

by AMY BARRATT

Just when you were beginning to worry that kétaine was dead (when’s the last time you saw a story about Céline and René?) comes word of a new musical extravaganza in the tradition of Notre Dame de Paris.

Direct from France, the cradle of cheesy pop, comes Les Dix commandements, a multimedia spectacle recounting the lives of Moses and his Egyptian brother, Ramses. Are we clapping our hands with glee?

The show has been seen by a million people in Paris and on tour around France, Belgium and Switzerland. They’ve apparently sold four-million copies of the soundtrack featuring the music of Pascal Obispo (undoubtedly a household word in France). The big hit song is called “L’envie d’aimer.” And if you’re wondering how you would get the Red Sea to part on stage, fear not: the director, Elie Chouraqui, is a cinéaste, and has incorporated special effects footage right into the show. A veritable assault for all the senses!

Les Dix is booked into Théâtre Saint-Denis starting March 20. Although La Presse reported back in October that it would run for three months, so far it’s only slated for one week—with multiple extensions no doubt at the ready if ticket sales take off.

Over-the-top crop

Elsewhere in extravaganzas, the Cirque du Soleil has a new show—title as yet unrevealed—opening here in April. It will be directed by Dominic Champagne, the golden boy whose flair for spectacle has been proven in such theatrical hits as Don Quichotte and L’Odyssée, both for Théatre du Nouveau Monde. Let’s hope he can reinject some metaphor and meaning into the Cirque, which in recent years has become more and more about less and less. Tickets go on sale Jan. 19.

While we’re in the larger-than-life file, lovers of Italian opera should take note that L’Opéra de Montréal is doing La Traviata in February followed by Tosca in March. La Traviata tells the classic story—originally penned by Dumas fils as La Dame aux camélias, and later revisited by Garbo in Camille—of the love affair between Alfredo, a young gent, and Violetta, a demi-mondaine. She is convinced to abandon her lover in order to save his reputation and proceeds to die of old-movie disease.
The title character in Puccini’s Tosca is a famous singer, who loves a painter/political activist. The bad guy is a cop. There’s jealousy, deception, broken hearts, and people singing themselves right into the next world. That’ll be me blowing my nose in the cheap seats.

Of the subscription houses, the biggest bang for your buck this winter/spring comes from TNM. Opening this week, they have Rémy Girard as Falstaff in Les Joyeuses commères de Windsor (Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor), directed by Yves Desgagnés. In March, François Papineau (of L’Odydsée fame) is Stanley Kowalski in Un tramway nommé Désir, translated and directed by René Richard Cyr. As if that weren’t enough, they finish out the season with a brand new Michel Tremblay play, L’État des lieux, directed by—who else?—André Brassard, and featuring the great Rita Lafontaine.

On the off-chance that any of us want to be reminded of the 1998 ice storm, Centaur’s first offering of 2002 is Freeze, by Stephen Orlov. Hey, don’t despair yet: it’s directed by Harry Standjofski. Opening Jan. 31.

Victoria, the hit of the ’99–’00 season at Centaur, is back in French for five performances next week (Jan. 22–26). Dulcinea Langfelder’s one-woman pas-de-deux with wheelchair is not to be missed. At Salle Pierre Mercure. :