Preceded by a warm welcome from the public and the community when it premiered in Quebec City in 2019, the play Foreman finally arrives in Montreal. The production on display at the Fred-Barry room, in a very successful staging by Olivier Arteau and Marie-Hélène Gendreau, met our expectations. And our heart.
Through the story of the virile friendship between five construction guys in their twenties, gathered in the countryside the day after the funeral of the father of one of them, the author and actor Charles Fournier wrote a powerful and touching text. on a subject little represented in the theater. A story of “ordinary guys”, but who experience great internal dramas.
“When I was 11, I became a man,” says Carlos, at the start of Foreman. By “becoming a man”, the character defended by the author means to build a solid shell to protect oneself from others. And of himself. Above all, never to pass for a “fif”.
The word in f, supreme insult, is paradoxically part of their daily vocabulary. Because being a man, for Carlos, is also resorting to violence, giving a few slaps on the face in passing, among other excesses.
” I wrote Foreman because I no longer want to scream, ”explains Fournier in the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier program. Younger, the author worked eight years on construction sites, before going to study in play at the Conservatory in Quebec, in 2012.
His play therefore questions our conception of masculinity, without lace or judgment. A masculinity that is both fragile and toxic, playful and violent, but above all wobbly. Because Foreman starts from the premise that the majority of men today remain incapable of expressing their emotions, their vulnerability. From father to son, these young men are built on the faltering edifice of a facade of masculinity.
PHOTO EVA-MAUDE TC, PROVIDED BY THE COMPANY
Pierre-Luc Désilets in the room Foreman
Foreman skilfully passes from Carlos’s confessions to scenes of party well watered with his friends. Young straight white men who look like kids who have grown up too fast. The final scene where everyone becomes a medieval knight, in a beautiful cacophony, reminds us very well.
Alongside Charles Fournier, we find on stage Pierre-Luc Désilets, Miguel Fontaine, Steven Lee Potvin and Vincent Roy. All actors recently graduated from the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec, which probably explains the great cohesion of this cast.
The staging uses great finds, including hilarious choreography, which is reminiscent of the cult comedy The Full Monty. It also highlights the self-mockery of the text, because despite the seriousness of the subject, Fournier’s world is not devoid of humor.
Amélie Trépanier’s scenography exhibits dead trees perched on the ceiling, a wooden rope on the garden side and, in the center, an old Toyota Corolla which will have several uses during the nearly two-hour performance, but where you never get bored. not.
Foreman is a great success which once again proves the talent and vitality of theatrical creation coming from the Old Capital. After Montreal, the show will be back at Périscope in Quebec, from November 9 to 27; then will go on tour on November 30.
Visit the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier website
Foreman
By Charles Fournier
Directed by Olivier Arteau
and Marie-Hélène Gendreau
At the Fred-Barry room, until November 6