For the record, a young Michel Tremblay never went stateside to track down the legendary beat writer Jack Kerouac, though watching George Rideout’s brilliant new play inspired by What if … you’ll be tempted to believe he did. Michel & ti-Jean’s invitation to suspend disbelief is easy to accept.
The year is 1969. The legendary author of On the Road is holed up in a Florida pool hall, at 47, a raving alcoholic weeks away from death. Tremblay is 27, fresh from success with his first his iconoclastic play, Les Belles-Soeurs, and eager for approval from a literary hero. They meet, they argue, laugh and dance. Kerouac consumes the litre of Canadian Club and saran-wrapped sandwiches Tremblay has dragged across the border by bus, meanwhile, putting the young writer in his place.
Along the way, everything you need to know about the terrific literary force unleashed by these two is revealed, including Kerouac’s Quebec roots. Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange L’Evesque were among the million Quebecers who immigrated to New England before the Second World War. Jack spoke French until he started school and, in playwright Rideout’s interpretation, is still boiling with the pungent demons of hell and heaven instilled by a Catholic upbringing. Tremblay is a generation ahead of him, angry at the Church and unwilling to concede anything.
As a bio-play, this one succeeds marvellously in the tricky art of having famous people tell us about their life and work without awkward exposition. These two go further, spilling out their angst, drawing conclusions, messing up the stage in the sometimes painful, more often joyful process. Who knew Les Belles-Soeurs could be done by chickens without words?
It would be easy to fill this space raving about the stellar performances of Alain Goulem as the macho desperado with a golden heart, Kerouac. Or Vincent Hoss-Desmarais’ gentle Tremblay, his steely ambition visible through a veneer of adulation and politesse. Full, nuanced performances superbly directed by Sarah Garton-Stanley, backed up by a crack design team and original music by no less than Ian Tamblyn. Other sources and your friends will go on and on.
What you need to know before all the tickets are gone is that Michel & ti-Jean is one of those landmark cultural events after which Montreal, Quebec will never be the same, a play that redefines how we live together and how that existence, so changed in recent decades, can make great art. Many small, clever decisions have been taken by the writer and director to maximize the play’s nord-américanité. Kerouac refers to Tremblay as a ‘Canuck’, removing a vast chunk of our local politics from view, all the better to expose the similarity of our anxieties, most notably, our fascination with and desperate need for approval from America, in this case, from the epicentre of jazz, beat poetry and prose, all things cool. One big warring family, so it seems.
Playwright George Rideout spent the first sixteen years of his life in Texas before moving to Thunder Bay, Ontario and finally settling in the Eastern Townships. Opening night, he told me he spent two years writing and many years thinking about this play. It shows. His text reveals a deep knowledge and love for Québécois theatre, for the exuberance, lyricism and audacity which has characterized francophone playwriting since Tremblay launched it on a new path in 1968. At the same time, he has mastered what very few Québécois plays have bothered to attempt: the traditional classical principles of dramatic story-telling, the arc of action, the hard mystery of rigorous artifice that makes a night at the theatre fly by and seem so real. A synthesis of two theatrical traditions, Michel & ti-Jean springs from rich soil. Catch it now before this one goes on the road.
Michel & ti-Jean continues at Centaur Theatre until March 7. Box office: 514-288-3161.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }