In 2006, the Quartanier published Parents and friends are invited to attend, a “drama in four scenes with six stories at the center”, a singular literary object which earned its author, the Saguenéen Hervé Bouchard, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. To bring to the stage such a tangle of monologues, a dizzying score, by turns sublime and grotesque, borrowing without discrimination from poems, novels and theater, the adventurous Christian Lapointe was ideally suited.
On the set of the Quat’Sous, a theater where the director is creating a first show in his twenty-year career, we observe a funeral ceremony, certainly, but even more a carnival rite. The father died, leaving behind his wife, sons and sisters-in-law. Truculent, both literary and popular, lyrical and telluric, rigorous and lanky, the luxuriant language of this choir of lost souls evokes, as has often been said, Beckett and Novarina, Tremblay and Ducharme, but also Chaurette and Danis . One thing is certain, there is in this liberated speech a serious buffoonery, a serious satire, which perfectly suits the talents of Christian Lapointe.
Mise en abyme
Forced to choose, in other words to make cuts in the ample material provided by the book, the director gave birth to a 90-minute show, which exhibits various tones. We slide from monologue to polyphony, from pure realism to powerful metaphors, from true drama to consummate irony. True to his obsessions, Lapointe made sure to give pride of place to the mise en abyme. Thus, the text constantly refers to its own form, its nature, its character, it questions the strengths and limits of the theatrical exercise and the actor’s performance.
This didascalic discourse, important in Bouchard’s book, plays a crucial role on stage. Particularly inspired, Lapointe carries out a rich and coherent reading, where live video occupies a special place. He orchestrates a strange, wacky and disturbing ritual. In the cramped space imagined by Anick La Bissonnière, the accessories by Claire Renaud, the lighting by Martin Sirois and the sound design by Andréa Marsolais-Roy contribute to the performance being endowed with an exacerbated theatricality, an extravagance which, However, never sink into excess.
While Lise Castonguay gives all her presence to the “sleeved” widow, that is to say without arms and prisoner of a superb wooden dress (designed, like all the costumes, by Virginie Leclerc), Sylvio Arriola, Tiffany Montambault, Ève Pressault and Gabriel Szabo embody the sons and sisters-in-law with admirable vigor by wearing rubber masks to which wigs are sewn. This kind of hood, as disturbing as it is fascinating, evoking in particular the world of sadomasochism, offers incredible possibilities from a theatrical point of view, a mythical dimension that Lapointe exploits with mastery.