Les fighting Irish

>> Howie le Rookie packs a punch at Licorne

by AMY BARRATT

Is it just me, or does Howie le Rookie sound like the title of a Canadian TV show about a fictional NHL team? Well anyway, it’s not. It’s actually an Irish play about two Dublin punks, the Howie Lee and the Rookie Lee (that’s not me throwing in extra articles for the heck of it—it’s what they call themselves), and it’s currently playing in French at La Licorne.

Though the lads in Mark O’Rowe’s Howie the Rookie share a last name, they are apparently not related, although one of them does try to claim kinship with another famous Lee, i.e. “the Bruce.” Apart from the name, the Howie and the Rookie share a seedy neighbourhood, a street dialect, and bits of the same story, but not until curtain call do they share the stage.

The first act belongs to the Howie, with his monologue describing an evening spent exacting revenge from a guy who infected his friend’s spare mattress with scabies. Then it’s the Rookie’s turn to spin a tale that begins with Siamese fighting fish and ends in tragedy.
The Théâtre de la Manufacture production is directed by Fernand Rainville, whose wisest decision was not to bother with an intermission between the two taut monologues. The translation is by something of a local wonderboy himself, Olivier Choinière, who, among many other more legitimate credits, is the evil genius behind the Théâtre d’été de série B that has proved such a lark these last two Augusts on the terrasse of Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui.
Claude Despins plays le Howie like a balled fist, ready to strike anywhere he’s needed. But he’s loyal too, almost noble, in a buttheaded kind of way. Maxime Denommée’s le Rookie is a passive pretty boy, one of those guys who constantly finds himself in situations he doesn’t realize are of his own making.

Curiously, and unlike the company’s Reine de beauté de Leenane earlier in the season, there is nothing in this production that feels distinctively Irish. But that too seems like a choice. It’s a québécois poetry that Choinière puts in the mouths of characters who, except for their funny names, would fit right in at Papineau and Ste-Catherine.

Circus act

Those rapscallions at Gravy Bath Productions have started calling themselves “the Only Montreal Young Company.” Well, the average age of participants is about 22.5, so there’s no denying their youthfulness. Their notoriously reclusive resident playwright, Anthony Kokx, has teamed up (!) with Timothy Thomson to create Top Gun Circus, a dark comedy playing for the next three nights only.

Asked about his interest in circuses, Kokx replied, “I dream about them. I wish I were in one. So, I’ve created my own. And, I think most people in Montreal see Gravy Bath as a bunch of clowns. So we’ll give them what they want.” The show is directed by Madd Harold (alias Matthew Tiffin), designed by Genevieve Genest and features Adrian Burhop, Tony Palermo, Nicolas Wright and all of the usual suspects. :

Howie le Rookie, to April 27 at La Licorne, 523-2246 or 790-1245 Top Gun Circus, March 28–30 at Calixa-Lavallée, $12, 920-9183