Strange phenomenon in our theatrical universe that of plays in work-in-progress by Robert LePage. His works are not tied up at the start, and some less than others. Depending on the reactions of the room and the successive inspirations of the playwright and the actors, they end up finding their final form after trial and error over the performances. Without completely reinventing itself, it goes without saying, but sometimes in abundance.
Thus, at the media premiere last Thursday, its long (4:30) Riopelle Project at the Duceppe theater had already been cut. Will it be more so, under the need to prune a first part that is too heterogeneous? The exercise of creative evolution remains quite puzzling, because the criticisms, published at the beginning of the process, necessarily influence the public. The alchemist Lepage, strong in his fame, can afford to explore. All the same, it would be better to attend his pieces at the end of their run, after running in, we think with a touch of melancholy.
The Riopelle project was received with bravos and caveats. Its technological prowess is striking, especially in the second and third parts, with its projections of water, ice and mountains on which the performers evolve. In the beginning, the scenery mechanics are clumsier. But it is the text that seeks above all its sap.
The piece, in a series of uneven sketches, follows chronologically, over three eras, the life and career of the automatist painter, with humor, but in a surface course, despite certain higher flights. The playwright is used to scattering his work with many moments of magic, fragile poetry and emotion that burst the surface of words and images to breathe their grace. Here, out of the abundant field of vision, we count them on our fingers.
Between Montreal, Paris, New York, Isle-aux-Grues and other places of departure, the gifted artist led such a hectic existence that it is easy to reduce his journey to a series of anecdotes. Stop doing name dropping by recreating his encounters or his links in the middle of the last century with creative giants like Juan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Samuel Beckett, without fleshing out the scenes. Several thumbnails fall flat.
The work following a commission from the Riopelle Foundation for the centenary of the automatist painter, to what extent did Robert Lepage have his hands tied? Certainly, he could not use his imagination and had to stick to archival documents as his source material. The manifesto episode Global denial alongside Borduas and the automatists at the École du Meubles imposed his recall on the boards, like his fruitful friendship with André Breton.
His hobbies too. Anne-Marie Cadieux, exceptionally colorful Joan Mitchell, artist and love of her life, steals the show from Luc Picard, more indolent in his interpretation of the aged painter. The hoary artist erases himself by using his last companion, Huguette Vachon, as a stick of old age. Didn’t she mean more to him?
In a formidable painting, Étienne Lou embodies Claude Gauvreau, the accursed poet rejected by all, at the gates of death. The strength of his playing and the monologue runs down our spines and gives us chills. This time, no whirlwind of screenings on the menu, just the emotion and tragic destiny of the creator of The load of the epormyable moosetorn in the face of the hostile world.
We would have liked the face of Jean Paul Riopelle a few dives in such deep waters. This painter-sculptor confided little, but he exploded like a volcano. Ah! Let its fiery lava flow over us.
He seems so odious, the leading artist who betrays Fernand Leduc and his former companions, who twirls from woman to woman, sometimes a boor, sometimes an opportunist. Did it really come down to this narcissistic, lying and misogynistic being? Where does the sensitivity that emerges from his watercolors filter from? Where were his doubts as an artist in renewal hiding, he who disconcerted his admirers by jumping from one style to another? Didn’t he express his existential despair other than by drinking excessively, cultivating excess and pouring broken shards of paint on his powerful mosaics of shadow and light?
However, we have to wait for the third part of the show, devoted to the testamentary work in 30 paintings. Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg, so that his relationship to creation is approached, with certain spectacular effects that animate his paintings.
However, the human being delivered here in scattered fragments escapes like his geese. Beyond his crazy dance with the color and light of nature, what man was hiding behind the titan of our visual arts? The public at the premiere still didn’t know it when they left Place des Arts after midnight.