In this section, our theatre collaborators take turns each week to list the works to watch, their favourites and the must-sees.
We liked: People, places, things. Duceppe Theater, until October 12.
While the subject of the play by British director Duncan Macmillan is not the most cheerful (an alcoholic and drug-addicted actress tries to overcome her addictions), the staging by Olivier Arteau, including dance and fiery lighting, demonstrates an imaginative spirit and dynamism. The performances of Anne-Élisabeth Bossé in the lead role and Maude Guérin in no fewer than three supporting roles also leave one admiring. The last part of the show, where the heroine confronts her parents, remains particularly etched in the heart and mind.
We liked: How to Survive in the Wild. Segal Center, until September 29.
After its stage transposition in 2021 by Duceppe (as well as a television adaptation), the excellent novel by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard Wildlife Handbook is reborn on stage, in English. Kevin, inventor of a program that allows you to speak with the virtual incarnation of deceased loved ones, loses his soul in the cutthroat jungle of business. Rebecca Gibian’s simple and effective staging as well as the generally very fair cast add to the sustained pace and biting dialogues of the adaptation that Gibian also signs.
We are waiting for: My faith. International House of Puppetry Arts, September 25-27.
For its very first visit to Quebec, the Compagnie à, founded in France by artists Dorothée Saysombat and Nicolas Alline, is offering a sexuality course given in object theater by a nun. This 35-minute show for adults and informed adolescents, presented by Casteliers, is very loosely inspired by the Council of lovea satirical and iconoclastic tragedy imagined by the German Oskar Panizza in the 19th century.e century… for which he was imprisoned. Here, nativity scene figures, santons and crucifixes will be reoriented towards astonishing counter-employments.
We are waiting for: Donkey skin. Denise-Pelletier Theater, from September 25 to October 19.
It is a rather dark tale, which notably involves incest, which interests Sophie Cadieux and Félix-Antoine Boutin. However, the skillful reinterpretation that they had proposed, in 2019, of Ingmar Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexandre hopes for the best from this new version of the story written by Charles Perrault and revisited by the filmmaker Jacques Demy in 1970. Will they make this tale of erasure and flight a fable of emancipation? One thing is certain, it is announced that the characters will frequent the forest as well as a car wash…
We are waiting for: River Woman. Outremont Theater, September 25; City Theater, September 28.
On the occasion of the International Literature Festival (FIL), Evelyne de la Chenelière lends her intelligence of words and her suave voice to the most recent novel by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, River woman. The author of The woman who runs away and of Forest woman (of which we could hear an amalgam at FIL in 2022) herself signs, with the complicity of her interpreter and Steve Gagnon, the editing and the reading of this singular work, both poetic and raw, where the omnipotence of feminine desire finds an echo in that of the tides, waves and torrents.