In northern British Columbia, Grace and Sugar Ducharme share a meager apartment, somewhere between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley. The first parade in the village with his “classic cut, rodeo style” cowboy boots; the second, reclusive, always wears their mother’s jogging suit.
On the edge of a landfill reminiscent of Vano Hotton’s pretty sea of garbage scenography, the twins celebrate their thirtieth birthday. The action will begin with the appearance of a stranger in a police uniform, child and secret, with a foot fetish: the Trout Stanley of the title, who will break a vow of silence here.
The disappearance of a naked Scrabble champion dancer will also blur the picture – because a bad fate has been stalking the sisters since the death at birth of the third of the twins, somewhere between the cervix and daylight. For 10 years and the disappearance of the parents (the “saints”), the deaths at Tumbler Ridge have followed one another, marking their seal on a disastrous destiny.
The exploded proposal by Canadian author Claudia Dey, in a translation and adaptation by Manon St-Jules, offers this colorful universe on a text constantly concerned with creating an image. The table is set for joyful gaming pleasures.
A piece in three parts
To a first third where the implementation will leave us in the evaluation, watching for the many avenues opened by this strange beast that is Trout Stanley, will be followed by a tasty heart of the story carried first by a resolutely Ducharmian Sugar-Trout couple.
The play explores their emerging revolt against the abandonment of childhood dreams, a resignation embodied by this worn-out cowgirl sister. In the rich imagination that brings them together, we find the war waged against the world of adults – with puns, from afar – that the Nobel Prize winner Le Clézio evoked. The pleasures of the game, nourished by the earthiness of the text, will then have a blast, in the care of a crazy trio. Mélissa Merlo, however, will appear as the pearl of the whole: her performance without insistence offers a precarious and offbeat Sugar, almost worrying, constantly tense at a tipping point.
A final third, however, will see the tension ease. Not having read Claudia Dey’s text will prevent us from deciding, but this show at Periscope seems far from a text that the publisher (Coach House Books) considers to be a fable on the deceptive nature of love and its traps .
It’s difficult to know what stands out here in Hugues Frenette’s staging or in Manon St-Jules’ adaptation, or even in the initial text, when the last portion of the show focuses mainly on closing the gaps, with redemption for the key for all characters, love in the vanishing line. This finale will appear more entangled in words, presentations following one another on resilience without quite reaching the target, in a smoother ending where the memory of these characters whose irregularities and imperfections had carried us so well fades away.