At night, all cats are gray, the saying goes. It is also at night that fantasies leave the folds of the unconscious to burst under cover of darkness. These troubled hours when the sun is no longer serve as the setting for the most recent piece by Evelyne de la Chenelière, entitled The night treatment.
In this short one-hour work, the playwright has fun blurring the lines between dream and reality, between light and darkness. Above all, she splits her text into several facets which become so many versions of her story, leaving the audience to decide where the truth lies.
The plot is not easy to summarize. Indeed, the characters of the father, the mother, the daughter and the gardener are presented in a constantly different light, transforming according to the variations imagined by the author.
Certainly, the mother (formidable Anne-Marie Cadieux) remains completely neurotic and the daughter (Marie-Pier Labrecque, very solid) never manages to stem the dull anger that inhabits her. At their side, the insomniac father (Henri Chassé) continues to pretend that everything is fine. As for the mysterious gardener (Lyndz Dantiste), he remains the screen onto which the others project their desires for freedom or redemption.
Throughout a night that will begin in the greatest of banalities – a shared supper – these four protagonists will build murder plans, worry about the disappearance of one, feign indifference in front of the fugue of the other, to love each other, to tear each other apart.
To please guests that we never see, the parents will be in perpetual performance, trying to save the day in front of their daughter always ready to unpin some grenade.
However, the fate (even the past) of each will remain vague, as if the darkness allowed all possibilities. And so much the worse for the spectator in search of a common thread to cling to…
PHOTO YANICK MACDONALD, PROVIDED BY ESPACE GO
Anne-Marie Cadieux is irresistible in the role of the neurotic mother who wants to feign indifference in the face of her daughter’s repeated running away.
In this scattered text which can destabilize at first sight, the language is of a precision which commands admiration. The playwright brilliantly uses a scathing humor tinged with a perfectly dosed absurdity (and which is reminiscent of a certain Ionesco).
The ubiquitous music
During the staging, Benoit Marleau chose to give the text all the place it deserves by reducing the scenic effects to a strict minimum. A table, six chairs. Carefully choreographed moves. Everything is magnified by the backstage projections of his accomplice Stéphanie Jasmin, which are sometimes soothing, sometimes terribly anxiety-provoking.
The music is also omnipresent, the notes adding to the musicality of the words. The room also opens with the very beautiful Sonata noh 14 of Beethoven, a choice that can be misleading. This piece could indeed suggest that The night treatment bathed in a certain classicism. However, it is quite the opposite.
This text in constant modulation, carried with aplomb by very well directed interpreters, is undoubtedly disconcerting at times, but it keeps us glued to our benches despite everything. Its fragmented form, its humor, the beauty of its words: Evelyne de la Chenelière’s play remains unquestionably a fascinating theatrical object.
The night treatment
Text by Evelyne de la Chenelière, directed by Denis Marleau. With Anne-Marie-Cadieux, Henri Chassé, Marie-Pier Labrecque and Lyndz Dantiste.
To Espace GoUntil April 2