Warning – the following contains spoilers.
I saw a dress rehearsal of UNB Theatre’s upcoming production “Bonjour, là, bonjour” last week at Memorial Hall. The set was still in construction and the stage lights weren’t turned on – it was still quite a few days until the show opened.
But I still left the theatre with my mouth agape and my head swirling.
From Feb. 1- 4, the University of New Brunswick’s senior acting class is putting on the 1974 drama written by Michel Tremblay, a renowned Québecois dramatist. The play follows Serge, a 25-year-old Montreal man and his dysfunctional yet loving family.
“We did a lot of acting exercises at first, so doing the play now is the chance to take those exercises and put them into an actual character and a performance,” said second-year student Alex Donovan, who plays Serge. “It’s a lot of fun and it’s a very rewarding and time-consuming experience.”
Len Falkenstein teaches the course, which is part of a 24-credit theatre minor. He said he’s always wanted to do a Tremblay play and after seeing a production of “Bonjour, là, bonjour” years ago, he’s had it stuck in his head ever since.
The play is staged in-the-round, meaning the audience surrounds the stage. There’s no back stage area. The actors are on-stage for the whole 90 minutes – no breaks, and no opportunity to come out of character.
“It is an intimate play; it’s not a big flashy play with a lot of action so [staging it in-the-round] really works to draw the audience into it,” said Falkenstein, who’s also the director of drama at UNB. “As much as you can do to sort of break down the wall between the stage and the audience, the better.”
I sat in a chair so close to the action that sometimes I felt like I was actually a part of the play; some awkward neighbour lurking outside the window to see what all the fuss what about.
Oh, did I mention there was fuss?
The play opens with Serge’s two aunts, Gilberte (played by Meaghan Farrah) and Charlotte (Kaleigh Stultz), and his father Armand (Joshua Laplap). It can be difficult to portray elderly characters without seeming too jokey, but Laplap especially had the old role down pat. He moved slowly and with great difficulty, and his mannerisms were right on cue.
Serge is questioned by his aunts and father about his three-month soul-searching sojourn in Paris, but they don’t let him get a word in. Since the play was originally in French and then translated by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco, the actors kept the French pronunciation of names, which was a nice touch.
Serge sits in the middle of the stage on a stool, and instead of scenes concluding and actors leaving the stage, the scenes occur simultaneously. Serge’s sister Lucienne (Hannah Augur) is introduced – the oldest of the family, and the one who apparently achieved her dream life.
That is, until we find out she’s having an affair with a friend of Serge’s.
We then meet Monique (Sarah Farquhar), another of Serge’s sisters, and Denise (Tiffany Badour), his sister-in-law. Both are battling addictions – Monique to pills, and Denise to food. They seek comfort in their little brother in increasingly awkward ways. We meet Nicole (Stephanie Doucette) and come to know her as Serge’s love interest, but his sisters speak of her spitefully.
Serge is, as Falkenstein told me, metaphorically in the center of the family and literally in the center of the stage. His family complains to him about each other; they expect him to fill voids in their lives; they count on him to solve their problems.
It’s during a fight with Lucienne that the play takes a dramatic turn.
“I bet you couldn’t even get it up for a girl who wasn’t your sister,” she shouts.
Insert audible gasp here.
It turns out Nicole is a member of the family as well – she’s a few years older than Serge, but they played together all the time as children. The show moves quickly from one character to the next, and the action gets progressively more emotional. Monique tells Serge that he no longer listens to her, and she believes her salesman husband is cheating on her. Denise asks him to move in with her and her husband, telling him that she’ll stick to her diet if he’s around and that he’s the only one who thinks she’s worth paying attention to.
Lucienne tries to convince him to get a bachelor apartment so she and her man on the side can sneak around. Armand confesses that he couldn’t hear for most of his life, but was too proud to seek medical attention. We find out that after his wife died, he started to spend a lot of time at the tavern.
The last line of my notes reads, “Holy emotional.”
The play made me laugh, made me cringe, and made me think. Falkenstein said the characters are relatable in a sense because they’re all just looking for love and connection – basic human things at the root of it all.
“Tremblay just kind of takes things and sort of pushes them to the point where things are uncomfortable and we’re kind of squirming in our seats a little bit,” he said.
You can say that again.
Check out the show at Memorial Hall on UNB campus from Feb. 1-4. The show runs at 8 p.m. nightly, and tickets are $6 for students, $10 for adults.
