To open the Rideau Vert season, director Claude Poissant exposes the pangs of vanity and “toxic positivity” in a new satirical play, defended with aplomb by Ève Landry and eight young performers who have recently graduated from drama schools.
Are humans fundamentally good or evil? This is one of the (many) questions that divide the protagonists of Do good. One piece in the style of a pamphlet on the state of the world, created last Thursday at the Rideau Vert. She looks at herself with happiness and… concern.
Continuing the great initiative of Mani Soleymanlou, started last year with The shadowthe Rideau Vert presents with the Théâtre français du CNA, this show bringing together eight graduates. Moreover, Doing good was written for these young performers, by François Archambault and Gabrielle Chapdelaine, at the request of the director Claude Poissant.
PHOTO DAVID OSPINA, PROVIDED BY THE GREEN RIDEAU
The excellent Xavier Bergeron in Doing good at the Green Curtain
The one-act play offers a series of sketches, both comical and absurd, whose aim is to provoke reflection on the values and political correctness of today’s society. And it succeeds! We deride these ideas that always start with a good intention, but which end up exhausting people and becoming counterproductive. By deploring that “benevolence has become an imperative”.
PHOTO DAVID OSPINA, PROVIDED BY THE GREEN RIDEAU
Eve Landry and Mehdi Boumalki: a solid duo in the show Doing good
The Ego Parade
From pay parity to workplace equity and equality programs; to lovers struggling to get a “French” in the age of consent, the show shows the failings of our society, without falling into anti-wokism or populism. “When the world is on fire, individual attempts to reverse the course of things sometimes seem like a disturbing parade of the ego,” argue the creators ofe Do good.
The writing is both subtle and caustic, humorous and vitriolic. The play contains a few gems that make you laugh and think. Although uneven, the scenes flow smoothly without dragging. We move easily from solo to duet and chorus. One of the best moments is a duet (which recurs a few times) summarizing the hypocrisy of the urban bourgeoisie in a few incendiary lines. Ève Landry (excellent!) plays a very “Bobo-Bio-Plateau” woman, and Mehdi Boumalki (a very fair and charismatic actor of Moroccan origin) plays an itinerant Arab who begs in the street. This woman’s charity is matched only by her class contempt.
PHOTO DAVID OSPINA, PROVIDED BY THE GREEN RIDEAU
Léa Roy, Simon Champagne, Mehdi Boumalki and Charlotte Richer in a painting by Doing good
A high-end cohort!
A word about this cohort from the Conservatoire de Montréal, Lionel-Groulx, UQAM, Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, École nationale, University of Ottawa… They don’t all get their professional baptism at Rideau Vert. Léa Roy is known for her role as Rosie in the series The Emperor; Christophe Levac was in The Escape and the movie Young Juliet by Anne Émond; Xavier Bergeron was part of the cast of Royalat Duceppe; Elizabeth Mageren played in The Goddess of FirefliesThe whole thing (completed by Anaelle Boily-Talbot, Simon Champagne and Charlotte Richer) is impeccable and proves that the next generation in Quebec is doing very well, thank you!
In co-production with the Théâtre français du Centre national des Arts, the show currently playing at the Rideau Vert until September 14 will be presented in Ottawa from September 26 to 28. The play by François Archambault and Gabrielle Chapdelaine is also published by Leméac and is already in bookstores.
Check out the play’s page at Rideau Vert
Visit the play’s page at the National Arts Centre
Doing good
Text: François Archambault and Gabrielle Chapdelaine. Director: Claude Poissant,
At the Green Curtain. Until September 14.