He was his student at the National Theater School and shared with him several conversations and creative projects. Olivier Choinière decided to make the late director André Brassard the central character of his most recent play, The Last Cassette. A daring spectacle, but which struggles to touch those who did not know the man during his lifetime.
Olivier Choinière, who signs the text and direction here, has chosen Violette Chauveau to play AB, a brilliant director stuck in a body that hasn’t obeyed him for too long. Disabled and alone, the 75-year-old has lost his mobility, but not his sharp mind.
In an oversized, clownish costume by Elen Ewing, the actress is unrecognizable. On the evening of the premiere, in a room full of people from the middle, each gesture sketched, each swear word muttered provoked tender laughter. Violette Chauveau has dissolved into the filthy clothes of her character, to the point that one is almost surprised to find her again, with her eternal youth and her mischievous gaze, at the fall of the curtain.
Olivier Choinière may have repeated that his AB was a fictional character, but the similarities with Brassard are far from accidental. It is indeed the director of Les Belles-Sœurs who haunts the stage of Quat’Sous, amid mounds of cigarette butts and empty Coke cans. The stifling decor that looks like it was made of ashes, imagined by Simon Guilbault, constitutes another strong point of this show.
But, there is a but. The lack of rhythm and certain clumsiness in the staging (notably when the character questions the audience in vain) weigh down the whole thing. The preamble, during which we sense all the solitude of the character, stretches unduly; we have to wait a long time before AB takes out a cassette tape recorder from his clutter to tell on tape (and to the present audience) his vision of society, of old age, but first and foremost, of his art.
Listening to him recite Racine while perched on the toilet seat, however, we feel that the theater still helps him to stay alive. Despite everything else.
However, it is when he shares his inner dialogue aloud that the character of AB becomes the most interesting, the most touching. The rest – notably the very strong Beckettian approach that Olivier Choinière wanted to give to the show – is just icing on the cake, to use a metaphor dear to Brassard.
This fire that smoldered in AB’s belly could ignite all the spectators, who ask nothing better than to be moved, enlightened, transported. Unfortunately, we feel that the exercise is aimed more at the initiated: at those who knew Brassard or at those who practice this demanding art.
Others will feel left out at times. Despite this performance by Violette Chauveau to mark with a white stone.
