Inexplicably, recent American theater has been produced relatively little in Quebec. Countering this phenomenon is the very first quality of the show produced by Écoumène, the young company of actress Marie-Joanne Boucher, and presented these days at La Petite Licorne. Created in the United States in 2012, Johnna Adams’ play The knot is here translated by Maryse Warda and directed by Guillermina Kerwin.
One could first believe in a simple meeting between a teacher of 5and year (Édith Paquet) and a mother (Marie-Joanne Boucher), that of a student whose 11-year-old son was suspended for five days. It is actually a face-to-face, a settling of accounts, a verbal joust in good and due form, a psychological theater at the same time as social, a raw and cruel text, but which never gives in to gratuitous violence, in short, a work tailor-made for La Licorne.
In this exchange where every word matters, relying on the microcosm of the school and the school system, on the nature of the privileged and certainly crucial link that exists between the teacher and the student, it is the whole society who is on trial. It is largely a question of violence, that of adults and that of children, concomitant, but also of the cruel absence of place granted to those who do not correspond to established norms.
In the classroom imagined by Guillaume Lord (sets) and Étienne Boucher (lighting), a place saturated with light and covered with representations of divinities, it must be recognized that Guillermina Kerwin’s staging lacks originality and tone. While the language machinery operates like clockwork, the direction of actors is not up to par. Inconstant, sinful by casualness in the case of the mother and by caricature with regard to the teacher, the game contributes very little to increase the tension between the two characters.
Let’s be clear, these few dross in no way prevent us from enjoying the score. When we learn that the boy has taken his own life and that his mother is there to get answers, the camera takes a tragic turn. At the end of this fierce discussion, where the arguments of the two women, although opposed, seem valid, will the Gordian knot be cut or untied? Johnna Adams explores with tact, in a happy mixture of rigor and emotion, the very topical theme of the limits of freedom of expression in the arts. Its nuanced illustration alone is worth the detour.