Belles Soeurs The Musical: Tremblay passes the test of musical theatre with flying colours!!

 

Photo: “Ode to Bingo”courtesy of the NAC and the Segal Centre for Performing Arts.

A chorus of unglamorous women of various shapes and sizes files onto the upper level of the proscenium arch that frames the kitchen where Germaine Lauzon (Astrid Van Wieren) and her “soeurs” are about to party, pasting one million trading stamps into those little booklets, making Germaine’s dream of owning all those items in the store catalogue, a reality at last. Little does she know that her dreams will come crashing down before the performance ends.

A band of five talented musicians tucked into either side of the small kitchen space raises the excitement level and carries us beyond a traditional Broadway style of glitzy performance. This new English language production of Tremblay’s Les Belles-soeurs (a reworking of the French musical production presented in 2010), originally staged as a play in 1968, is actually not far from Tremblay’s original conception of the work. True, there is music, there are lyrics in English, and the original joual which was the essence of Tremblay’s statement about Québécois culture, has been replaced by lyrics in standard English. Even the ending has changed radically. Yet it works because director René Richard Cyr, composer Daniel Bélanger, adaptor of the English book Brian Hill as well as the English Lyrics, musical adaptation and additional music by Neil Bartram and the musical direction by Chris Barillaro, have collectively reinvented a stage language that compensates so well for all that has changed.

The final scene no longer ends as it did in the play, with Germaine in despair and confusion as the chorus sings OH CANADA, which suggests independence was probably no longer possible because the Québécois were still fighting among themselves. That ending even fuelled a debate in 1968 about the nationalistic charge of this show. This new version brings a feminist reading to the event and ends with a sense that these women will finally take charge of their own lives in spite of all the squabbling. Germaine rises to the occasion declaring she will no longer be subjected to the will of the church to the oppression of men. She and her sisters will go out on their own and make it happen.  The triumphant tone leaves the audience with a sense that all the underprivileged women of Canada are now facing a good struggle for a brighter future. The feeling of purification was immense.

In spite of a slightly reduced cast, this performance has maintained a vibrant chorus, inspired by Greek theatre, which is central to the author’s work . Tremblay, a great fan of opera, constructs the play with solos, duos, trios, quartets and quintets already paving the way for the musical numbers that take their cues from the text. Each number has the women challenge their surroundings, revealing their struggles but not before confessing their secret lives, as well as their ignorance, their jealousy, their narrow mindedness, their blind subservience to religion . Clearly, the author both hates and pities these women so that irony, satire, irritation, annoyance and much ridicule all bubble over together, creating an attractive mixture that holds ones attention all the way through.

The quartet (originally a quintet) that roars out “It’s a dull life” ("une maudite vie plate”) captured the anger, the rage of these women whose lives are unbearably monotonous. Neil Bartram’s additional music which suggests whiffs of Kurt Weil , Steven Sondheim and a highly expressionist pounding of drums, bass notes and kitchen utensils, underscored by the women stamping their feet, transforms their frustration into a furious dance around the kitchen table (choreographed by Linda Garneau) that pumped up the energy and fore told all that was to come

The music is not just an accompaniment but a real partner whose creative presence establishes the emotional tone of each number, often revealing deeper , hidden tension, underscoring the threat of the more disturbing nuances of meaning that the lyrics don’t necessary tell us. As the creative confusion gets started and the sisters start licking stamps, each character takes to the spotlight and tells her story!

Lisa Horner as Lisette de Corval is the guest who thinks she is superior to them all because she has been to Paris where everything is so much more “ civilized”. An ironic but semi-serious anti-French crack against the former colonizer but Mme de Corval is also the object of local ridicule with her fancy clothes and fussy ways. Underlying that laughter however is a nasty critique of that woman who is embarrassed by her friends who are not as high class as she would like them to be but De Corval herself is the snob and the embarrassment. In the original play, she speaks a strange mixture of local joual deformed by someone who speaks what she considers to be “Parisian French! However, since the language of the show is now standard English her whole persona who hinged on that phony imitation of “proper French” is gone and what appears in its place is a hilarious parody of an opera Diva. She warbles a grand solo about how she is so ashamed of this working class scum, all the while conducting the orchestra with great awkward gestures,, flirting with the audience, with the musicians, and maintaining her original upper class pretense that is cut down by her inappropriate gestures and clownlike stance. Such compensation strategies were brilliant!

Many solos that became confessional monologues where the singers, frozen under a spotlight, expressed all their hidden fears, their anguish, the frustrations, their guilt living in a world where church morality and small minds have oppressed them all their lives and where men makes their lives unbearable. The Ode to Bingo was perhaps the most significant collective moment when all the women sing their hearts out the minute they learn that Bingo has returned to the neighbourhood . As the music rises and the choreography builds, that tribute to their favourite game becomes a wild orgiastic experience where they are all panting, screaming and gesticulating, leaping on the table in a frenzy of emotion. Such trivia becomes their ultimate moment of excruciating pleasure which far from a caricature, becomes both pathetic and sadly funny. And the music brings it all to the fore ground.

And then there is that dramatic return of Pierrette the fallen sister, sung by Geneviève Leclerc. Her enormous voice ripples through the theatre, confronting the chorus of furies hovering around her, shrieking insults at this devilish creature who has dared to show her face among them. A defining moment in the show , Leclerc’s magnificent voice epitomizes Pierrette’s freedom and independence that Germaine’s daughter Linda Lauzon has been seeking since the very first scene, right until the final discovery of betrayal amid the roaring laughter of the jealous sisters.

This musical tragedy which keeps the audience laughing all evening,  has maintained the literary integrity of the play, while giving contemporary musical theatre a refreshing thrust into the future. Don’t miss this one.

Belles Soeurs The Musical, continues until May 14 in the theatre of the NAC.

Based on the play by Michel Tremblay,

Book, Lyrics and direction by René Richard Cyr

Music by Daniel Bélanger

English book and adaptation by Brian Hill

English Lyrics, musical adaptation and additional music by Neil Bartram

Orchestrations and Musical direction by Chris Barillaro.

Choreographer    Linca Garneau

Set Design            Jean Bard

Costumes             Meredith Caron

Lighting                Martin Labrecque

CAST

Valérie Boyle, Lili Connor, Élise Cormier, Lisa Horner, Geneviève Leclerc

Stéphanie McNamara, Mélanie Phillipson, Mary Pitt, Geneviève St Louis

Marcia Tratt, Astrid Van Wieren, Paula Wolfson, Rielle Braid, Kristina Uranowski

Production from A Copa de Oro Productions  (Montréal) and the Segal Centre for Performing Arts (Montreal)