CYCLORAMA IS A TRIP BETWEEN TWO SOLITUDES
Bilingual docudrama hits the road between Centaur Theatre and Théâtre d'aujourd'hui
Call it a magical Montreal mystery tour. Not that Cyclorama, which plays to Nov. 5 at Centaur Theatre and beyond, holds any secrets as to where the halftime bus will be taking us.
Ticket-holders know in advance that the first hour takes place at Centaur Theatre, the middle section on specially commissioned transport, and the last leg at Théâtre d'aujourd'hui on St-denis St.
No, the mystery at the heart of this entertaining and fact-packed docudrama is why anglophones and francophones are so divided.
It's a question that has long nagged Laurence Dauphinais, a francophone writer-director-performer who has worked often with anglophone theatre artists including Antoine Yared, whom she first met in Repercussion Theatre's As You Like It in 2009. That's one reason Dauphinais chose Yared to perform in Cyclorama with her. The two of them play themselves as they investigate the Two Solitudes phenomenon, along with reallife theatre academics Alexandre Cadieux and Erin Hurley.
As for other possible reasons she chose him, well, Yared, or at least a semi-fictionalized version of himself, would like to know the answer to that, too. After all, as a Stratford Festival regular, he hasn't worked in Montreal for 10 years. Could it be, he wonders aloud, because his Lebanese background will make the show less white?
The mystery at the heart of this entertaining and fact-packed docudrama is why anglophones and francophones are so divided.
As it turns out, Dauphinais's reasoning isn't quite as cynical as that, but Yared's presence, as well as some of his reminiscences, do remind us that the issues around linguistic identity in Quebec aren't as binary as they're often made out. His suspicions of Dauphinais's motives add a touch of sometimes caustically funny, sometimes moving drama into what might otherwise have been a dry exercise in just the facts, ma'am.
Thankfully, those facts, presented with dazzling multimedia effects and an engaging sense of easy chumminess from the four performers, are rarely less than fascinating, taking us on an imaginative journey through decades of theatre history here in Montreal.
The bus ride is more than a means to an end. Specially recorded voices keep theatre-goers informed of the significance of what lies beyond the windows.
One of the voices is David Fennario, whose groundbreaking bilingual play Balconville premièred at the Centaur in 1979 and whose follow-up play there, The Death of René Lévesque, notoriously outraged francophone sensibilities.
The fact that we journey up St-laurent Blvd., that traditional demarcation between French east and English west, is fraught with a significance not lost on the passengers.
Do we get an answer as to why that dividing line has cut so deep for so long? Well, even the show's three-hour duration — which goes by pretty fleetingly — isn't nearly enough time to arrive at a satisfying conclusion. But as to the question, “How do we overcome that divide?”: A show as thoughtful and enjoyable as this, which literally inhabits both linguistic spaces in the same evening, is definitely headed in the right direction.