Unlike Kayla Tucker, the 11-year-old girl who landed the role of the orphaned redhead after months of auditions across Quebec, Geneviève Alarie, Émily Bégin and Véronique Claveau weren’t dreaming of making musicals when they were children. Accomplices, sneering, a bit anxious at the idea of the premiere ofAnne which is fast approaching, the three talented performers admit from behind the scenes of the St-Denis theater that it is in a way fate that has guided them towards a genre that is probably as demanding as it is polarizing.
“It was thanks to Denise Filiatrault that I really discovered musical comedy,” recalls Émily Bégin. I was 21, I had just been kicked out of Star Academythe bus had just left for Sainte-Adèle when she told me that I had a role in Cabaret. When you taste it, when you realize that it suits you perfectly, when you’re fueled by that adrenaline, it’s impossible to go back. »
“Me too, intervenes Véronique Claveau, it is thanks to Denise that I set foot in the musical. She first offered me a part in a musical drama called An almost normal lifethen the following year it was hairspray. At that moment, I knew it was the start of something. There’s such a team spirit in this kind of production, I get chills just talking about it. »
It’s the movie of my life. I listened to it every year around the holidays. I was insatiable.
“For my part, explains Geneviève Alarie, it happened in 2002, when Serge Denoncourt offered me the role of Olive Houde in Houndstooth. I was still at the National School, I didn’t dream of a career in musicals, but I liked to sing, and above all, I was ready to take up all the challenges that came my way. Over the past 20 years, thanks to Denise Filiatrault, René Richard Cyr and Serge Denoncourt, the three women have taken part in 12 musicals!
irresistible orphan
This summer, Just for Laughs has set its sights on Anne, a musical comedy created on Broadway in 1977 before being adapted for the cinema in 1982, for television in 1999, and again for the big screen, but with less success, in 2014. Last December, on the airwaves of NBC, we even got a live version. In nearly half a century and an incalculable number of productions, the international enthusiasm for the endearing orphan has not weakened, quite the contrary. After occupying the St-Denis theatre, the show bringing together 24 performers under the leadership of Serge Denoncourt will be presented in Quebec City, at the Albert-Rousseau hall.
“It’s the movie of my life,” says Geneviève Alarie enthusiastically about the feature film released in 1982. “I listened to it every year around the holidays. I was insatiable. You probably won’t believe me, but my favorite character, the one who fascinated me, without really understanding that she was almost always drunk, was Miss Hannigan. When Serge called me to ask me to audition for the role of the tyrannical director of the orphanage, I was so overjoyed that I didn’t even let him speak. It’s as if we had offered Luke Skywalker to the greatest admirer of Star Wars. It is an extraordinary gift. »
In search of a better life
While Émily Bégin embodies the dishonest and unrefined Lily St. Regis, Véronique Claveau portrays the calm and distinguished Grace Farrell. Between the three characters, women who live in New York in 1933, we can establish a rather obvious link: all three seek to free themselves from their condition, to improve their lot, to gain access to a better life; a quest which is also reminiscent of that of the little heroine at the heart of the show.
“These are very different women,” says Véronique Claveau. They have very distinct lives, but all three dream of more, better, something other than what they know. It should be noted that the three women are dependent on the goodwill of men, that they are subject to their power. “It’s not happening in 2022, admits Émily Bégin. We have therefore not sought to comment on the action since our time. We are content to find the accuracy of what we have to play. “There are two or three moments that could provoke reactions,” says Geneviève Alarie. It will certainly be up to the public to measure the path that has been traveled since 1933.”
An orphan among many others