The turbulent years have the advantage of providing us with fertile material for end-of-year reviews. It is perhaps this little extra in the news – which nevertheless made us very anxious – which gives this 18th vintage of Revue et correction a little more spice than usual.
Against the backdrop of the climate crisis and the progression of artificial intelligence (AI), the creators of the popular theatrical revue tackled a multitude of subjects, from the fall in popularity of the CAQ to the problems experienced by the REM, in going through drag, the teachers and healthcare workers strike, and so on!
The five performers – Pierre Brassard, Benoit Paquette, Monika Pilon, Marie-Ève Sansfaçon and Marc St-Martin – opened the year’s review in a beautiful way with a musical number which aimed precisely to highlight the growing presence of AI in our lives. They sang about their “human” bias while technical errors multiplied!
The continuation of this revue directed by Natalie Lecompte was a rollercoaster of sketches both on stage and on screen, with numerous sung numbers, it should be noted.
Special mention to Marie-Ève Sansfaçon, who played with virtuosity Ginette Reno, singing in the aisles of a Jean Coutu, but also Ariane Moffatt and Mélanie Boulay (with Monika Pilon, who played her sister Stéphanie) in a hilarious duet where the Boulay sisters sang (twice) depressing Christmas tunes.
In the end, it was Diane Dufresne that Marie-Ève played brilliantly, while Monika Pilon gave a captivating interpretation of Marjo.
In the political arena, in addition to the – effective – sketch of Prime Minister François Legault (Pierre Brassard), who relies on ChatGPT to relaunch the third link, we were treated to a running gag with repeated appearances by Bernard Drainville (Benoit Paquette), who tries to recruit teachers from the public. Our Minister of Education even threatened to sing if no one came forward.
On the television side, some shows have been parodied or gently excoriated, such as Martin Matte en direct, whose audience ratings have fallen by half since its launch. Here, Martin Matte (Pierre Brassard) is consoled by Christian Bégin (Benoit Paquette) who suggests that he do acting exercises to improve. Quite an entertaining moment.
We are also treated to parodies of La petite vie, A guy, a girl, Survivor and Indefensible, which welcomes Donald Trump rejoicing at the prosecutions which are piling up.
International news is perhaps the poor child of this otherwise quite successful end-of-year review. Besides this parenthesis on Trump and a gag on Mr. Niet, featuring Vladimir Putin who erases his opponents one by one, not a word on the Israel-Hamas war (the elephant in the room) or on the election of the far-right ultraliberal Javier Milei in Argentina, for example.
It’s impossible to tell you about all the gags or vignettes that fly by – there are really a lot of them, and not always of equal quality.
The Revue team still made a nice homage to the Cowboys Fringants in the last third of the show by singing a piece of five to the tune of America is crying, rewriting the lyrics. A nice little breather in a revue which passes at great speed, which resumes immediately afterwards, and which concludes with a medley where popular singers pass the baton, before singing Oxygène, by Diane Dufresne, in an apotheotic finale .
