Is language, however inventive and captivating, sufficient material to ignite a scene and transcend the pages of the novel that originally contained it?
This is the question we ask ourselves in front of the play Parents and friends are invited to attend, according to the book of the same name signed by Quebecer Hervé Bouchard. However, the answer is full of doubts and question marks.
The director Christian Lapointe (who also signs the adaptation here) was overwhelmed upon reading this dramaturgical novel published in 2006. For years, he dreamed of bringing to the stage this polyphony around death, childhood, of absence, but also of the vicissitudes and disappointed hopes of the Quebec people. His dream is coming true these days at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous, where outgoing artistic director and co-general director Olivier Kemeid has made a place for him in his final program.
We can understand Christian Lapointe’s fascination with the extraordinary language of Hervé Bouchard. His vivid words explode like geysers, coiling on themselves, disguised to take on new meanings. At the “citizen of Jonquière”, as he calls himself, the children are orphans and the mother is overwhelmed by her despair since the loss of Father Beaumont, her husband. To the point of losing both arms and wearing a wooden dress like she would carry her own coffin.
We must salute the interpreters, who managed to master this language like no other. This is particularly true for Lise Castonguay who, through her luminous presence, reminds us of the extent of her talent. In the role of Laïnée, the Sleeved Widow, she is all pain and strength at the same time.
The rest of the cast embodies with admirable energy sometimes the rowdy orphans of the clan, sometimes the intrusive sisters-in-law who come to see the extent of the damage. All these characters are adorned with dehumanizing – and disturbing – masks which smooth their features until they disappear.
And when the masks fall, literally, the story of this decaying family takes another turn, focusing on the role of theater, its strength, its diktats. All with these words which hammer home their importance, beyond (or even to the detriment of) the story.
Because if it is impossible to find false notes in the interpretation, the scenography is very effective and the costumes designed by Virginie Leclerc deserve to be found in a museum, we still come away from this play in a state of perplexity certain.
Because the theatrical adaptation of “this drama in four scenes with six stories at the center”, as Hervé Bouchard himself describes it, lacks air. Because the words assail us relentlessly, because the points of reference are blurred and we end up no longer knowing what is being said and, above all, what is being left unsaid. For Hervé Bouchard, a rule is imposed: “It’s speak or die, there is no alternative, there is no other driving force than that of speech, there is no other light. ” Everything is here.
Some will love the journey, because this strange proposition does not lack audacity. But others, like the author of these lines, will say to themselves that it would perhaps have been more relevant to read Bouchard’s dazzling language rather than seeing it born on stage. Because then the words have more room – and time – to settle.
