Canadian director Robert Lepage entranced audiences in Hong Kong along with his autobiographical 887 5 years in the past, a solo efficiency aided by his masterful use of toy-size props.
For this 12 months’s Hong Kong Arts Pageant, he and his group, Ex Machina, introduced one thing a bit totally different. Courville is loosely primarily based on recollections of his youth and advised with life-size puppets impressed by the Japanese bunraku custom.
Set in 1975, it centres on 17-year-old Simon and his small world in Courville, a city about to be absorbed into Quebec Metropolis and which, after 1976, would not exist.
However Simon isn’t Lepage; he’s one in all about 10 totally different characters that the one actor on stage, Olivier Normand, brings to life primarily simply along with his voice, and by working seamlessly with three puppeteers unobtrusively coated in black.
The slow-paced and fragmented narration – partly the results of frequent adjustments of scene and repositioning of the puppets – makes it all of the extra dramatic when the items of the puzzle lastly fall into place.
Heavy steel meets orchestral sound in Shiny & Black, with blended outcomes
Heavy steel meets orchestral sound in Shiny & Black, with blended outcomes
Simon’s father has died and he lives within the basement of the home shared along with his mom, who has rented out the one spare room to an alcoholic “uncle” who he detests.
He has a greatest good friend, Sophie, who has romantic emotions for him, whereas he himself lusts after a muscular and good-looking lifeguard on the public pool who’s a former classmate.
Lepage explains within the programme notes why he determined to make use of puppets reasonably than human actors. It creates the intimacy of a solo present, and avoids the embarrassment of getting teenage actors to behave out intimate bodily contact or, in a single scene, the self-exploratory side of sexual awakening.
With the usage of puppets, Lepage can also be capable of create results that can not be performed in regular theatre. For instance, when Simon is combating along with his uncle within the basement, the puppet is all of the sudden changed by the actor Normand, which amplifies the emotional depth and pathos of that vital second.
Considered one of numerous scenes which introduced collectively unrelated strands of the story would have been fairly difficult for human actors: Simon’s physician finishing up the post-mortem of Sophie after she has drowned herself.
Those that anticipated a puppet present to be lighthearted had been in for a shock. It is a story of nearly each form of teenage trauma you possibly can consider.
Teenage self-absorption hardly ever interacts with the large social and political occasions referenced as subtext all through the play: the Montreal Summer season Olympics of 1976, and the final election that very same 12 months wherein the pro-independence Parti Québécois received for the primary time.
Le Corsaire by La Scala ballet: nicely danced in locations, however uneven
Le Corsaire by La Scala ballet: nicely danced in locations, however uneven
This backdrop does, although, create a way of momentous adjustments and uncertainty that matches Simon’s frame of mind.
The opposite backdrop – Lepage and Ex Machina’s famously dazzling scenography – often drew gasps of amazement.
Simon’s furnished basement was a collapsible picket field with a prime cowl lowered easily and noiselessly to create a further stage space. The intelligent use of digital projections and props transforms it into about 20 totally different locations: the general public pool with the attractive lifeguard trying on, or the riverside boulders the place Simon and Sophie hang around, for instance.
One minor quibble: Mathieu, the lifeguard, supposedly has hassle discovering work exterior Montreal as a result of his English isn’t ok. However in what was the premiere of the play’s English model (the unique was in French), Mathieu spoke fluent English all through.
“Robert Lepage x Ex Machina – Courville”, 52nd Hong Kong Arts Pageant, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts Lyric Theatre. Reviewed: March 14.
