She didn’t ask to come into the world, Marie-Jeanne tells us at the beginning of the first act of Starmania. “What am I going to do today? / What am I going to do tomorrow? / That’s what I tell myself every morning.s “, sings the most important character in Luc Plamondon and Michel Berger’s rock opera. “I think he’s one of the most human characters in history, and that’s why his songs have had such an impact. When you listen to them, you connect with what they’re saying,” says Alex Montembault, who, after last year’s Parisian triumph, will reprise his role at Place Bell on August 6. A shared perspective with three performers of the key character in Starmania.
“It is certain that Marie-Jeanne is the most important character in Starmania “, assures Louise Forestier, who played it during the first production of the work in Quebec, at the former Comédie nationale theatre, on rue Sainte-Catherine, in 1980. “It’s the role that the public identifies with right away, and that’s magic!”
“There is someone in Marie-Jeanne who is completely innocent – in the good sense of the word!” Forestier continues. She is someone who is a little lost, who always falls in love with the wrong guys,” in this case Ziggy, this “boy who is not like the others,” she will also sing. “She is a bit of a victim, and well, many people identify with that. She captures all the emotions around her, but she is naive.”
For Fabienne Thibeault, who brought the character into the world, on record in 1978 and on stage the following year at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, she is “a flower child, a young woman who resembled the world she knew before. A character who dreams of an ideal and a world to be remade and who bears witness to everything that happens in this Underground Café, where she works, and the repercussions in the upper echelons of Monopolis”, the capital of the West, caught between the despotic impulses of the billionaire and aspiring president Zero January and the revolt of the Black Stars, a band led by Johnny Rockfort and Sadia.
Throughout the productions, Marie Carmen, Maurane, Luce Dufault, Isabelle Boulay and Lulu Hughes also served the customers of the Underground Café, keeping their eyes glued to the television on which the day’s news and the show are broadcast Starmaniahosted by Cristal, a sort of Star Academy before her time, in which Ziggy dreams of participating. Thus, Marie-Jeanne plays, in this sense, the role of the ancient chorus in Greek tragedy, both witness and narrator, sometimes addressing the audience directly.
Alex’s Marie-Jeanne
Director Thomas Jolly gave the role to Alex Montembault, 25, a singer-songwriter currently preparing his very first album. “I understand that it was offered to me for my simplicity of acting and singing,” says Alex, who had no prior experience in musical theatre.
“The production was looking for someone who would sing soberly to best convey Marie-Jeanne’s message, which contrasts with that of the other characters, who are colorful, fierce and dark. More calm, she explains to the audience what is happening. In this intense, sonorous and vocal show, the character brings a little balance.”
As with Fabienne Thibeault more than forty years ago, Marie-Jeanne brought consecration to Alex, crowned male revelation of the year at the Musical Comedy Trophies ceremony in June 2023, in Paris (Montembault is non-binary and uses masculine pronouns).
Alex’s talent is no longer in doubt, but like Thibeault, the performer also has the privilege of embodying one of the characters best served by the songs of Berger and Plamondon: Monopolis, Complaint of the automatic waitress, A boy like no other, Against each otherall classics of French-language popular song. “If I may, I’m not sure it was intentional, originally,” says Fabienne Thibeault, who knew the creation of Starmania. “I think without pretension that Marie-Jeanne became the main character perhaps thanks to the way I gave body to her songs, then to how the public received them.”
The immortelles
According to Fabienne Thibeault, Marie-Jeanne was not, at the beginning, a main character: several of her songs were intended for others – like Against each otherwritten for the character of the aging actress Stella Spotlight, played by Diane Dufresne, “but the song didn’t interest her, so I offered to do it,” on the last day of recording. Claude Dubois, arriving late in the evening to invite friends to go for a walk at the Élysée-Matignon, a popular disco club at the time, offered to improvise vocals on the song, now guaranteed to be on the album.
“Ah!” Forestier said, jumping. Against each otherit’s philosophy! It’s a prayer, it’s extraordinary, fantastically simple! I had a deep love for this song. And Complaint of the automatic waitressthis description she makes of herself. And the music! Singing that, it was never boring. ” Alex has a lot of affection for The world is stone“one of the most legendary. It closes the story by summarizing everything we have heard before. Musically, it has all the codes of Michel Berger’s music, its harmonic sequences.”
The songs have stood the test of time, but what about the story? “I think there are a lot of stories that still resonate today,” says Louise Forestier. I don’t know if it has anything to do with his childhood in Saint-Raymond, but Luc [Plamondon] has always had in his creation a look at the little one, the abandoned. His social sensitivity is still strong, because that is what, for me, Starmania : the class struggle, the ultra-rich and the left-behind. And the revolt.
“I find that the story of Starmania has unfortunately aged well, Alex Montembault also confirms. Everything that is stated or denounced there is still relevant. Zero January, for example, the dictator par excellence, immediately makes us think of political figures that I don’t need to name. The show Starmanialike today’s talent shows. The collapse of the tallest tower in the West. The many questions of gender identity that are addressed there and that are hyper-current. In fact, Plamondon was a precursor of something and at the same time had the impression of telling something of his time.”