Vintage year

From a play about falling concrete to Fringe surprises, 2010 was a stand-out for the English Montreal stage

TURNING NEWS INTO DRAMA: Porte Parole’s Sexy béton III: Abandon
Photo by KIRK WRIGHT

Looking over all the shows for 2010—taking in the end of the last theatre season, the summer productions, and the first half of this season’s work—what first hits you is just how much work the Montreal Anglo scene has produced this year. The second is just how good a lot of it was. And it stems from the common answer to a question I pose to actors and directors here all the time: given the opportunities and money available in Toronto or the U.S., why are you working in Montreal? It’s the tight, dedicated, never-say-die community.

The Segal Centre struck first and struck hard as they hosted a string of great productions early in the year. Documentary theatre wizards Porte Parole set the tone for an impres­sive 2010 with Sexy béton III: Abandon. Their conclusion to a trilogy examining the tragedy of the Laval bridge collapse and the corruption that led to it was a compassionate, som­bre and reflective winner. Later, Tableau d’Hôte presented A Line in the Sand, about the murder of a child inside a Canadian army base during Operation Desert Shield. Chip Chuipka and Glenda Braganza would pick up Best Actor and Best Actress awards in a show that cleaned up at the MECCAs.

Conflict and war, ever-present staples of drama, continued on centre-stage with Infinithéâtre’s Father Land, Stacey Christodoulou’s remarkable reworking of Macbeth in Creole at the Segal, Imago’s Champ de Mars and even in Centaur’s modern update of The Comedy of Errors, transplanted to the warring cities of Montreal and Toronto.

FRINGE, MIME AND LEPAGE

GORGEOUS AND TENDER: Vittorio Rossi’s Paradise by the River

Last summer saw the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Fringe festival and it’s only fitting that local talent made the biggest splash. Holly Gauthier-Frankel’s semi-autobiographical Miss Sugarpuss Must Die! was a stunner of a show that revealed a torchy jazz singer inside the burlesque performer. Meanwhile, packed houses ate up Joannne Sarazen’s Jesus Jello at the Free­standing Room.

Later in the summer, Repercussion Theatre brought on Montreal’s Godfather of Mime Jean Asselin to direct a charming season of Shakespeare-in-the-Park with Romeo and Juliet.

This fall and winter are already proving to be a great vintage. Teesri Duniya’s collaboration with Philippine-Canadian Carlos Bulosan Theatre brought an exciting People Power to Mon­treal; Morris Panych worked with SideMart Theatrical Grocery to premiere his new crime spree play, Gordon; Tony Nardi brought down the house in Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge. Centaur remounted Vittorio Rossi’s tender memory play Paradise by the River (the theatre’s best in-house production in years). Lastly, Black Theatre Workshop celebrated their 40th anniversary with the powerful and moving A Raisin in the Sun.

The increasingly wide scope of theatre and performance got lots of play throughout the year in shows like the Cirque Éloize urban arts spectacle iD; Festival Voix d’Amériques with hip hop poet Ursula Rucker and Jamaican-Canadian performer d’bi.young; and the clown-work and physical theatre of Daniele Finzi Pasca’s exquisite Icaro.

Which leads us to the biggest show of the year, Robert Lepage’s Lipsynch. The nine-hour, multilingual opus, with its fragmented stories centering around the human voice, was a once in a lifetime experience: a masterwork from a master storyteller, and the highlight of a very good year. ■

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