Toto Too’s “Hosanna”: a masterful performance by Barry Daley
Photo Maria Vartanova
Toto Too Theatre gave us the lively, exciting and beautifully executed musical Avenue Q last season and last night, this versatile company opened a show of a different sort at “Live on Elgin : Hosanna, the ground-breaking two-hander written by Michel Tremblay , first performed in 1973 in French at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous directed by André Brassard. It was followed by the one act monologue which gives voice to La Duchesse de Langeais, a legendary role that actor Claude Gai made his own and that has been performed in Ottawa several times in English and in French. La Duchesse is one of the regular flamboyant drag queens who gets together with Sandra and her gang to humiliate Hosanna on Hallowe’en evening, the event that precedes the opening of our play. The moment Hosanna comes rushing on stage, she breaks into tears, shaking with anger and humiliation. The play then comes full circle as the second part of the evening gives Hosanna her extraordinary monologue where she tells us the whole story of Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra, that builds up to that fairy tale-like evening and the final insulting trick all the drag queens of the Main play on her, throwing her dreams back in her face. What happens then is the final part of this briliant play.