Two theater women who transform their friendship into a work of art, artists who translate their mutual attachment, transpose their words and gestures, their memories and their hopes into the bodies and voices of exceptional actresses. This is the immense luxury (and the terrible risk) offered to the author Fanny Britt and the director Alexia Bürger by giving birth to All thingsa moving show that brings together Sophie Cadieux and Kathleen Fortin on the Quat’Sous stage.
One is brown. The other redhead. They enter the scene in the enviable splendor of their long-standing friendship, in the quiet strength of their patiently acquired complicity. Together, in three decades, they faced great joys and hardships, welcomed marvelous apparitions and suffered heavy losses, passed through these beautiful and cruel stages which crystallized forever a precious bond. Honest, but never immodest, never complacent, autofiction hits the mark: once again, the specific turns out to be universal and the intimate addresses the collective.
Over the course of the next 75 minutes, without ever dwelling on it, without ever sinking into melodrama, any more than into derision for that matter, the two women courageously question the foundations of their friendship. How to reveal yourself to others? How to reveal yourself? How to love outside the romantic relationship? So many questions that appear in watermark. In the exercise offered to them — think of a basement session for young minds overflowing with imagination — Sophie Cadieux and Kathleen Fortin are particularly gifted.
Truth cinema
We are probably in a room of 2020, the cinema that was once “right in the middle of the McGill metro”, the one that allowed “to go directly from the train to the popcorn counter”. From the true worship they dedicated to stand-by-methe film directed by Rob Reiner in 1986, of which the replicas of the French version, in consummate Parisian slang, constitute the common thread of the performance, Fanny Britt and Alexia Bürger tackle a host of subjects, including entering the adulthood, the first contact with death, the anxieties of parenthood and the subjugation of women’s bodies.
How to survive the disappearance of the other? This is probably the fundamental question posed by the play. Does losing a soul mate mean losing a crucial part of their story, maybe even a part of themselves? But do not believe that the show is tearful. The questioning is existential, of course, but it is always approached with a smirk, with a tasty anecdote concerning history or science, with a good word that defuses the drama without short-circuiting the emotion, without harming the reflection.