I would like to tell you about a wonderful theatrical event that I attended. For its beauty, its inspiration, its rarity, for the triumphant welcome received. Because this show reconciled us with our hard times. Yes, art can engender an intense communion in its stride. Elections aren’t the only thing in life… A twelve-hour marathon including breaks, in six parts, just think! On a single performance starting last Saturday at ten o’clock in the morning (with delay!) at Espace libre, rue Fullum. Real session of the brave! But The crossing of the century knitted by Alice Ronfard, read and acted on the words of Michel Tremblay, drawn from several of his plays and novels, was intended to be a Quebec saga, wrapping three generations of women in the veils of our collective myths. It was tempting.
Enough to say to yourself: “Two episodes, no more”. Then: “I’ll hold out until dinner,” before embedding it. The vast majority of spectators stayed there until dark, returning after intermission, too enthralled to leave. A close-knit audience as much as the twenty actors on stage.
We don’t often see people taking communion in the alley between two episodes and three croutons, with the impression of taking part in a major event. At dinner, a few of us gathered around a hot dog at the local bin, apparently taken from Francoise Durocher, waitress. Many artists from the milieu – even Lorraine Pintal, coming out of her disaster-stricken TNM – attended the happening.
Based on an idea by André Brassard, Alice Ronfard will have taken a long time to refine The crossing of the century, under green light from Tremblay. Here, the line magnified by the author of Chronicles of the Plateau-Mont-Royal seemed to represent the entire people of Quebec. All these French speakers drawn from their countryside, disarmed on the asphalt of the metropolis between enslavement and revolt, took the spittoon. With their pain, their misery, their promiscuity, their dream of something else, their identity and sexual crises, the upheavals of their society.
Spectators recognized certain novels and plays from which emerged scenes and lines, leaving themselves bewitched as to the rest. These excerpts served by fluid narrations, with movement and rhythm, were transformed under the chorus of voices into a cruel and comic, sad and glorious tale, which took you by the throat.
The first episode was taken from a recent novel by Tremblay, Victoire !wonderful throwback to the turn of the XXe century, with fantastic flavor. In her heart: Victoire’s incestuous love with her brother Josaphat-le-Violon. From this primal cry was born the exodus in Montreal, soon transplanted on rue Fabre, between these strong and frustrated women, these often humiliated men!
The clan’s grain of madness would allow young Marcel, a survivor of The fat woman next door is pregnant, to transcend his bun. To him, the creation of enchantments guided by his cat Duplessis and his knitting fairies. The fact remains that at the Paradise club, Uncle Édouard, disguised as the Duchess of Langeais, will have preceded him on the shores of the imaginary while Albertine and her daughter Thérèse tore each other apart in the kitchen.
Between tables moved by the protagonists, Emmanuel Schwartz leaped as the main narrator and magical spirit. Several roles could go to one or other of the performers, fueled by their fervor and that of the audience. In the evening, the last episodes, more animated, more colorful, gave birth to powerful scenes of mother-daughter confrontations, then the tragicomic death of Édouard, who was close to the sublime, and the triumph of Marcel who had become immortal. The heroes were fully incarnated. We entered the land of legend.
From his bench at Espace libre, Michel Tremblay must have followed all these threads intertwined by Alice Ronfard with amazement (is this really my work?) mixed with recognition (yes, my words, my characters, under so many new arrangements !). But he was beaming, wildly acclaimed, like Alice Ronfard and the actors after such a piece of bravery. Soon, a Radio-Canada podcast will allow the public to enjoy the flights of this great text, with other performers and a studio recording. Spectators will also rediscover the world of Tremblay at the Rideau Vert with Albertine in Five Times — The Opera.
But from that day, who will see the full magic reborn? To offer a single performance of such an important spectacle is to deprive so many absentees of unforgettable moments. The exercise exhausts the actors (even the public), but we wish theater lovers a resumption of The crossing of the century. So as not to remain only a handful to have come out of there re-enchanted.