It was a premiere night, Tuesday, in the national capital, for the creation of Slam!, a UFO show directed by Robert Lepage, merging circus arts with the (simulated) warrior art of wrestling. A successful mesh, full of humor, which should definitely not be taken seriously.
Quebec – Slam! We couldn’t have chosen a better onomatopoeia to describe this new offering from Ex-Machina and director Robert Lepage created with the Flip Fabrique collective. A 90-minute show where eight performers hit each other – let’s simplify -, which makes you grimace on stage and in the audience, you don’t see that every day…
But what happened to Robert Lepage to embark on this adventure? We knew he was a wrestling fan, he even now presents real wrestling galas at Le Diamant, but from there to creating a show that mixes the codes of wrestling with those of the circus, there is a step… which he has just taken .
Curious and a jack of all trades, Robert Lepage has explored almost all the performing arts. Theater, dance, puppetry, opera, circus… Except one: wrestling. “These are worlds that are similar,” the director told us a few days ago. Whether they are wrestling athletes or circus performers, they are larger than life characters. »
Lepage teamed up with the Quebec circus collective Flip Fabrique to create tableaux vivants that were sometimes hilarious, sometimes baroque, often absurd, but always entertaining. Whether in the arena or outside – like with these two commentators who speak in incomprehensible gibberish (well seen, deep down, we don’t care what they have to say!) .
Don’t look for the story or the common thread in Slam! There are not any. The mistake would be to intellectualize or seek a hidden meaning, a subtext, a metaphor, a second level of reading… Lepage warned us: “Our mental age is declining. Take it for what it is. »
What it is ? The show begins with fights. Baby Face vs. Strong Man. Highlander vs. Superheroes. Amazonia vs. Pretty Cowgirl. We are deeply into stereotypes and clichés. Remember the wrestlers of the defunct WWF: Macho Man Randy Savage, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Rowdy Roddy Piper… We don’t do subtlety.
PHOTO EMMANUEL BURRIEL, PROVIDED BY EX-MACHINA/FLIP FABRIQUE
Two of the performers Slam! in combat gear, with Mexican lucha libre masks.
We can speak of an appetizer, because the fights are spaced out and between each of them, small circus skits are inserted into the program. Here the “fans” of a wrestling athlete perform acrobatics on a security barrier, there “spectators” juggle cotton candy sticks…
The act that made the public react the most: the (old) janitor who installs a soft wire above the wrestling arena before doing a breathtaking high-wire act.
Shy reaction from the public
Speaking of the public reaction, one would have expected greater spectator participation. After all, part of the key to the success of this show is the reaction of the audience (euphoric, dismayed, disgusted, horrified, etc.), which reacts to a wrestler dominating his opponent, cheating or a bad decision of the referee. The creators of Slam! consider him (the audience) as a character in his own right.
Is it the recorded laughter emanating from the stage that discourages spectators from expressing themselves further? Or the very nature of the audience (we’re not in the US…) Maybe the creative team should give all the space to the audience just to see. Maybe even let the performers approach the spectators… Because the goal is to ensure that the catharsis of the performers on stage reaches the audience. We’re aiming for collective release here, right? It’s not yet the case.
During the circus asides, a few vignettes stand out, notably because they are synchronized with a screen which multiplies the movements of the artists. One of the nice surprises of Slam!. Imagine the effect of an acrobat doing four backflips or the figures of a contortionist, whose multiplied movements create sublime visuals. We would have taken more.
As the show progresses, the fights – which include the famous sleep-taking, we thank you – become more and more circus-like.
We wanted to show the uninitiated how it happens (as a curtain raiser), but now we have to move on to absurd things. Here a wrestler has fun cracking all the bones of her opponent (contortionist) before throwing her (literally) into a trash can. There, a wrestler strangles the referee with the rope of his diabolo, does the same to his opponent, and begins to play with his device. With one, two, three diabolos.
A show for the family?
Is this a show for the whole family? Robert Lepage swears to us that yes. Everything is so caricatured and magnified. It just can’t be. At the same time, it’s happening before our eyes. It is the tacit pact concluded between the public and the performers. The same goes for the circus. We believe in it, even if their performances seem improbable to us… almost fake… There are similarities.
This show risks being transformative for Flip Fabrique. Its artistic director Bruno Gagnon, who had to work hard with his acrobats so that they “accept getting hurt” (which they basically avoid in the circus), admitted a few days ago that there would certainly be a before and an after. “Everything is thought out, every moment is thought out, through technique, sound, image, acting…” he confided to us, enthusiastically.
The Quebec public, now accustomed to the evenings of wrestling galas scheduled at Le Diamant, seemed won over by the proposition of Ex-Machina and Flip Fabrique, which ends with a jubilant scene where the floor of the wrestling arena is replaced by a trampoline. It remains to be seen how the Montreal public will react. A story to follow.
Until March 9 at the Diamant de Québec. From March 19 to April 7 at Tohu in Montreal.