There is theater that upsets, that disturbs, that denies or soothes. And there is theater which entertains, pure and simple. Without desire to do more than the customer asks. The production ofThere were ten of them by the Comédie humaine is undoubtedly among the number.
The stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel, published in 1939, has been performed time and time again across the world. It has recently been taken over by the Comédie humaine band in collaboration with Productions Martin Leclerc.
Directed here by Martin Lavigne, the play features 10 characters gathered on an island off the coast of England. A priori, they have nothing in common, except having received a written invitation for a weekend in a luxurious villa.
But what was expected to be a pleasant seaside vacation will quickly turn into a tragedy, with the guests dying one by one. The murderer is one of the guests. Will the other guests (and the public) be able to unmask him (or her…)?
The recipe for the murderous closed session imagined by Agatha Christie has been copied ad nauseam, but we must pay tribute to the undisputed queen of the detective novel: this one is damn effective.
Just like the Comédie humaine show. Those who don’t know the outcome of this plot quickly get caught up in the game. Last week, at the Mirella and Lino Saputo theater in Saint-Léonard, some spectators exchanged hypotheses in hushed tones: “It’s him! It’s her ! He will be the next to die! No, it will be her…”
PHOTO JEAN-CHARLES LABARRE, PROVIDED BY PRODUCTIONS MARTIN LECLERC
The distribution of the piece There were ten of them
On the road
To interpret these 10 characters in great danger of ending up dead, the Comédie humaine brought together veterans of the stage – like Pierre Gendron, Mireille Deyglun and Marc-André Coallier – and lesser-known actors. They all play their part with sobriety and without too much pomp. In some cases, the caricature is not very far away, but here we are faced with archetypal characters who were not originally written with much subtlety.
The staging remains fairly conventional, with serious music for each new corpse, but again, we chose efficiency rather than flamboyant stage effects.
It must be said that this piece will travel a lot in the next two years. General public shows are planned until May 2024 across Quebec, from Abitibi to Saguenay, including Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec.
Numerous school performances – around 125 – are also on the program. And it’s so much the better if theater reaches out to students in Quebec, wherever they are. Several young people will be able to discover the most beautiful art in the world (without any bias here!) with this timeless thriller, even if it is today enveloped in an old-fashioned charm. Handwritten letters to attract victims? No phone to call for help? There was a time when such an ambush was possible!
These young spectators – and even the less young who would be introduced to theater with There were ten of them – may want to see more. To turn to more demanding pieces, to more daring proposals, to classics revisited with more inventiveness. The important thing is to create the first spark in them. And this well-crafted production can undoubtedly serve as a spark plug.
However, connoisseurs of theater will not have much to sink their teeth into. This show was obviously not put on for them.
There were ten of them
According to Agatha Christie, directed by Martin Lavigne
On tour across Quebec