On the one hand, the experienced actor who is back on stage after a prolonged absence. On the other, a young graduate with staggering talent. Together, Vincent Guillaume Otis and Émile Ouellette engage in a moving theatrical duel in The sona punchy piece presented at the Rideau Vert.
Posted at 11:20 a.m.
We have to admit it: Vincent-Guillaume Otis did not choose the easy way for his return to the boards. In The son, the actor must draw from the depths of his soul to embody Pierre, a powerless father in the face of the growing malaise of his eldest. The play signed by the French playwright Florian Zeller and directed by René Richard Cyr indeed offers a powerful score to the one we had not seen in the theater since 2015.
In a beige and smooth decor, a blended family tries to save Nicolas, Pierre’s eldest son, from emotional drowning. Here, there is no muted violence, eternally absent father or cruel stepmother. Just the ordinary of a family that juggles with the vagaries of everyday life: bathing the youngest, work, household chores.
In the middle of this banal picture, Nicolas suffers from an illness that he himself cannot manage to circumscribe. A throbbing pain in life, a pain in the soul that paralyzes him. Around him, the whole family is mobilized. We look for solutions, we also offer him ready-made formulas that we would like to be magical to bring him back to the side of the living. We wrap it in clumsy love, but love all the same. However, love is not always enough.
PHOTO DAVID OSPINA, PROVIDED BY LE RIDEAU VERT
Émile Ouellette and Sylvie De Morais-Nogueira play the son and his mother in Florian Zeller’s play.
In the role of this teenager who loses his footing, Émile Ouellette is breathtaking. His face changes in a flash from candor to fury, his eyes blur with sadness then become frightening with coldness… He already has the confidence and charisma of the greats and we can only wish him a career in the image of this first role, he who has just graduated from the National Theater School.
Sylvie De Morais-Nogueira is convincing in the role of the mother exhausted with worry for her child, while Stéphanie Arav does well this role of mother-in-law who must welcome a teenager in the midst of depression into her cocoon. Charles Aubey-Houde and Frédéric Paquet complete the cast.
A text of a raw truth
With The son, the French playwright Florian Zeller tells the tragic story of an ordinary family without artifice. Here, no unnecessary script pirouette. The truth is at its rawest level. We have all read or seen this story a thousand times. And yet. We remain attached to it, captivated by the power of the words, by the power of the interpretations and by the delicate staging of René Richard Cyr, without fuss and entirely at the service of the text.
On the evening of the premiere, when the curtain came down again after an hour and a half of raw emotion, the public was blown away, almost stunned. It will be a real tour de force for the two main performers to deliver night after night a text of such great emotional charge.
In the cinema, the great Anthony Hopkins received an Oscar for his role in The father, film written and directed by the same Florian Zeller. At the Green Curtain, the film by Son will have to be replayed more than 20 times. Bare heart, every time…
The son
By Florian Zeller. Directed by René Richard Cyr. With Vincent-Guillaume Otis, Émile Ouellette, Stéphanie Avav and Sylvie De Morais-Nogueira.
At the Théâtre du Rideau Vert.Until October 29.