by AMY BARRATT

When is Pierre Lebeau going to admit that he’s bald? How long must it take every day to sculpt the hair forward into a peak reminiscent of a fast food worker’s paper hat?

This was just one of the topics that distracted me during Theatre Ubu’s somnolent production of Quelqu’un va venir at Usine C. I am here to tell you, because none of the other critics will, that this Jon Fosse play, directed by Denis Marleau, makes for a long, boring evening. The co-production with the Theatre français of the National Arts Centre - of which Marleau is artistic director - premiered in Ottawa last month and continues just through this weekend in Montreal.

The playwright, apparently all the rage in Norway these days, employs a simple, repetitive language, and Marleau has matched that minimalism in his set design and his mise-en-scène. Actors dressed in black and grey create tableaux around the blond wood skeleton of a house. A husband and wife (Lui and Elle) have bought the old, isolated house by the sea in order to get away from other people - to be, as they say dozens of times in the course of the play, “Alone. Together.”

From their arrival on stage - inching their way up a ramp towards the house, wide-eyed as ghosts - the wife (Pascale Montpetit) is filled with dread - or is it hope? - that someone else will arrive to disturb their solitude. They move about the stage like clock figures on valium repeating the same few thoughts until finally, mercifully, L’Homme (Alexis Martin) shows up.

He turns out to be the man who has sold them the house, following the death of his grandmother, and is perhaps not quite ready to think of it as theirs. Or maybe he is just lonely, as the only neighbour within miles. At any rate, the wife lets him in, while the husband (Lebeau) retreats into a foetal position.

“Why doesn’t she just tell him to piss off?” I scribbled in my notebook as Martin sat drinking beer and carrying on a monologue while Montpetit looked a dozen kinds of uncomfortable. She may be trying to exercise passive aggression at one point, but for the most part, we can’t figure out what anybody’s doing, besides going through the motions of a pretty pretentious play.

There’s nothing wrong with straying from a naturalistic acting style as long as you retain some kind of emotional connection with the real world. These characters seem to take their inspiration from other plays, or old Ingmar Bergman movies, instead of from life.

The tragedy of it is that this all seems to be intentional. Montpetit is intentionally moving like a marionette, here cocking her head at an exaggerated angle, there lifting up an arm and letting it fall suddenly. And Lebeau is such a blank here, you actually start to miss his usual bombastic acting.

The considerable talents of this entire company should be put to work on something that speaks to more than a small circle of aesthetes. Quelqu’un va venir is the kind of pretentious twaddle that gives theatre a bad name. :

Quelqu’un va venir, at Usine C to Dec. 14.
Tickets $23/$30, 521-4493

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