TALE OF MURDER, REVENGE
Production brings dark story to life
Joey Tremblay could never forget the girl who was murdered near his hometown more than 40 years ago.
He was a nine-year-old from Ste. Marthe, and she was a schoolmate a year or two older.
He remembers hearing the gruesome details. He doesn’t recall how the story played out — whether there was a trial, whether anyone went to jail — but he remembers his visceral response.
“I remember having a very human reaction to it — where even from nine-years-old I was plotting the murder of the person who committed the crime,” said Tremblay, artistic director of Curtain Razors theatre company.
“I’ve always thought ... what if I saw that revenge through?”
This is the spark that inspired Carmen Angel, a play he began to write in 2001.
Part gothic fairy tale, part murder-mystery, the story is about Joe, who experiences a murder as a child, then enacts revenge 22 years later and reflects on his experience while sitting in jail.
“It’s the story of an innocent person being taken by a monster, basically,” said Tremblay. “And then as the person grows up, he becomes kind of the white knight, comes for the revenge, and then the price of the revenge is that he loses his own innocence or his sanity ...”
Jayden Pfeifer portrays the jailed Joe, while Lazlo Paradis is Joe as a child. Mike Gill plays an additional adult Joe.
It’s a similar presentation to Bad Blood, Tremblay’s darkly comedic retelling of a health-care nightmare, which Curtain Razors produced in spring 2017.
“You have a narrator that is telling a story, but then all of a sudden it starts to get animated and the people and the images that person is saying suddenly come to life and then he’s able to interact with them,” said Tremblay.
“That’s a very theatrical magic thing … which you don’t often see in theatre.”
Carmen Angel has been staged before, by Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre in 2003 and ’04.
Tremblay originally conceived the play as a one-person show, which he began writing at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He was there the day planes struck New York’s World Trade Center.
“I can’t deny that the weirdness of 9/11 at that time didn’t creep into the story in some way or other. I think for sure it did,” said Tremblay.
“Here I am, in the luxury of my cute little cabin writing a play and it feels like the Earth is on fire.
“Nine-11 is kind of the ultimate revenge,” he added. “In a very direct way, there’s people getting revenge on the States, and then … the payback from 9/11 is kind of the world that we live in today.”
Co-directed by Tremblay and Judy Wensel, Carmen Angel also casts Julianna Barclay, Kris Alvarez and Sarah Bergbusch.
An eight-night run is scheduled in “a very found space,” the John Paul II Centre in south Regina (at 2200 25th Ave.).
Curtain Angel runs Oct. 4 through 12, with the Oct. 5 performance already sold out. Tickets, ranging from $25 to $45, are available at curtainrazors.com.