Posted at 9:00 a.m.
Le Quat’Sous invites us these days to a gout torture. A day that never ends for four characters prisoners of an undefined place. With this mirror effect that grabs the viewer, captive in a room he can’t leave…
We don’t really know where we are. The characters don’t seem to know either. What connects them? Not clear either. Colleagues, friends, acquaintances. Finally, it doesn’t matter. They find themselves in this undefined place that they cannot leave.
Are they in a third dimension? A reality show? It may well be so. In any case, the director Olivia Palacci gives us the impression of being in the loft (less chic all the same) of Big Brother.
Little by little, we get to know our four “participants”. Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s dialogues are written in such a way that each character expresses (or guesses) the substance of the other’s thoughts. As if it were their conscience.
PHOTO EMMANUELLE BOIS, PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION
Rose-Anne Déry, Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon and André-Luc Tessier in a scene fromA day
What do they have in common? Their loneliness. Their fear too, which paralyzes them. Those familiar with Chekhov’s plays will draw a parallel with the Russian playwright’s antiheroes: apathetic characters, immobile, stuck in their daily lives, intelligent, but incapable of moving, of being in the action.
In short, A day flounders in these waters, an existentialist comedy (where we don’t laugh that much) in which we sometimes get lost – because everything is not always very clear in this text by Gabrielle Chapdelaine, despite certain undeniable dramatic qualities .
Each character has his demons and tries to fill the void that inhabits him. An unhealthy relationship that continues; an alienating job; a one-sided friendship; the guilt of a mother you don’t see often enough, the nostalgia for her gruel…
This day, which never ends, is therefore a kind of forced individual awareness. Impossible to get out of it otherwise. Even if one of the characters temporarily disappears in the back of a sofa before reappearing (!).
This kind of absurd purgatory is honorably defended on stage, in particular by Nathalie Claude and Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon. To pass the time, our friends play sports, cook a minestrone soup, dive into their memories or watch “classics”, these films with improbable scenarios that allow us to put our little miseries into perspective…
PHOTO EMMANUELLE BOIS, PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION
Nathalie Claude stands out in this difficult score by Gabrielle Chapdelaine.
But the Chekhov effect rebounds on the spectator, won over by the lethargy of this camera and, it must be said, the few blurs of this text that the director has not succeeded in clarifying, despite a relatively effective and projections about, rather entertaining. By a successful domino effect, this day never ends for us too.
And as the 24 hours pass, we are probably even more relieved than Alfonso, Debs, Harris and Nico to see it end. We leave hoping that tomorrow will be a better day. For them. And for us.
A dayat Quat’Sous until November 5
A day
Text by Gabrielle Chapdelaine. Directed by Olivia Palacci. With Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon, Nathalie Claude, Rose-Anne Déry and André-Luc Tessier.
Three PenniesUntil November 5