CLASSICS OLD AND NEW HEAT UP MONTREAL’S WINTER STAGE SEASON
Montreal theatre’s winter season gets underway this week with two premières from notable female Quebec playwrights. Théâtre La Licorne (4559 Papineau Ave.) premières La Meute (Jan. 16 to Feb. 3), a dark thriller set in a bed and breakfast from the prolific Catherine-Anne Toupin.
Centre du Théâtre d’aujourd’hui (3900 St-Denis St.) boasts a new play from Sarah Berthiaume: Nyotaimori (Jan. 16 to Feb. 3) takes its name from the practice of serving sushi off a female body and is a surreal satire on globalization. A minor but entertaining Molière, Les fourberies de Scapin, also opens on Jan. 16 at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (84 Ste-Catherine St. W.).
Meanwhile, at Théâtre JeanDuceppe (175 Ste-Catherine St. W.), there’s still time to catch Enfant Insignificant!, Michel Tremblay’s adaptation of his own playful memoir, Conversations avec un enfant curieux, which plays to Feb. 3.
The first anglophone production out of the gate (apart from Centaur Theatre’s (453 St-François-Xavier St.) Wildside fest, which ends this weekend) is I Think We’re Lost, a new weekly show from the always reliably hilarious folk over at Montreal Improv (3697 St-Laurent Blvd.) that started Jan. 12.
Centaur’s mainstage opener for 2018 is The Baklawa Recipe (Jan. 23 to Feb. 18), Pascale Rafie’s new drama that features an all-female cast. It tells of two Lebanese immigrants attempting to bridge the gap between traditional gender roles and the newfound freedoms accompanying Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, then moves on to more contemporary times. Emma Tibaldo directs what promises to be, like the food product of the title, a warm confection.
Centaur then plays host to legendary marionette master Ronnie Burkett with his extraordinary-looking touring show The Daisy Theatre (Feb. 20 to March 25). It features the talents of some 40 marionettes, including torch song divas, existentially challenged ventriloquists and foul-mouthed jokesters. Expect audience participation in this largely improvised show.
You might want to keep the kids away from Burkett’s gallery of wooden grotesques, but there are one-off children-friendly shows throughout the season, including Little Charming (Feb. 10), Laurent McCuaig-Pitre’s puppetry, poetry and performance take on the Prince Charming story; Totally Red! (Feb. 24), which sees Teen Tour Theatre wildly riffing on Red Riding Hood; and The Woods Witch (March 10), Little Fox Theatre’s spin on Greek mythology. Also watch this space for news in March of Eda Holmes’s first curated season as Centaur director.
The Segal Centre (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine Rd.) has scored a coup this season with an acclaimed production from Obsidian Theatre that played last year’s Shaw Festival. Master Harold … and the Boys (Jan. 21 to Feb. 11) is Athol Fugard’s modern classic about a schoolboy learning about the toxicity of white rule in 1950s South Africa through his relationship with two black servants.
The Segal follows this up with Jordan Harrison’s acclaimed (and recently filmed) sci-fi drama Marjorie Prime (Feb. 25 to March 18). Renowned Canadian actress Clare Coulter plays a dementia sufferer who, in a Philip K. Dick style premise, receives alternative memories via futuristic technology.
Infinithéâtre give the full production treatment to one of their Write-on-Q! competition winners. Conversion (Feb. 6 to 25) by Alyson Grant sees four family members attempting to enjoy supper while issues of race, religion, class and gender seethe to the surface. Directed by Infinithéâtre boss Guy Sprung, it plays at the company’s lovely new venue, Espace Knox in N.D.G. (6215 Godfrey Ave.).
Espace Libre (1945 Fullum St.) play host to a rare anglophone production (with French surtitles) with Black Boys (Feb. 13 to 17). A co-production from Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times and Saga Collectif, in association with Black Theatre Workshop, it’s a lively exploration of sexuality and race. There’s a chance to catch Black Theatre Workshop’s school tour presentation when it plays for the general public at MAI Centre (3680 JeanneMance St.), March 7 to 11.
Rendezvous With Home is Djenie Laguerre’s new play about two sisters travelling to Haiti to bury their father.
Relatively small-scale companies Raise the Stakes and Acts to Grind Theatre have new productions this season, the former with Greek classic Antigone at Westmount Park United Church (4695 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.) from Jan. 3 to Feb. 17, while the latter revive Brad Fraser’s typically spiky comedy True Love Lies from Feb. 8 to 18 at Centre Culturel Calixa-Lavallée (3819 Calixa-Lavallée Ave.) in Parc Lafontaine.
More lavish — and pricey — is Broadway Across Canada’s production of world-conquering musical Les Misérables, which raises the barricades at Place des Arts (175 Ste-Catherine St. W.), Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, from Feb. 7 to 11.
The francophone theatre scene is, as usual, far too teeming to cover everything in this preview, so let’s just give a nod to five shows that look particularly interesting.
The multicultural, usually anglophone company Teesri Duniya get together with First Nations collective Menuentakuan for a francophone production of Là où le sang se mêle (Where the Blood Mixes), Kevin Loring’s Governor General award-winning play, which manages to find some humour in the darkness of the residential schools legacy. It plays from Jan. 16 to Feb. 3 at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier (4353 Ste-Catherine St. E.).
No need to elaborate on the plot of The Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance’s 1977 play about the short tragic life of Victorian “freak show” exhibit John Merrick. L’homme éléphant, which plays at Théâtre du Rideau Vert (4664 St-Denis St.) from Jan. 1 to March 3, sees Benoît McGinnis following the prosthetics-free performances of David Bowie, Mark Hamill and Bradley Cooper in the role.
Titus (Théâtre Prospero (1371 Ontario St. E.), from Feb. 13 to 24, sees director Édith Patenaude following her productions of 1984 and Caryl Churchill’s Far Away with a feminist take on Shakespeare’s bloodiest, most berserk play, Titus Andronicus. It follows a Roman general’s atrocity-strewn downfall as well as the notorious culinary-themed revenge he visits on his tormentors.
Finally, seeing us into spring, are two contrasting adaptations of novels. Geneviève Petterson adapts her own work about disaffected Québécois teens, La déesse des mouches à feu (The Goddess of Fireflies), which plays at Théâtre de Quat’Sous (100 des Pins Ave. E.) from March 4 to 30. Meanwhile Théâtre du Nouveau Monde present Catherine Vidal and Étienne Lepage’s new version of L’Idiot (March 20 to April 14), Dostoyevsky’s magnificent tragicomic tale of a holy fool vainly attempting to inject humanity into the frosty high society of 19th century St. Petersburg.