Curtains Up Winnipeg

*****Cet été que chante is a play performed in French at Théâtre Cercle Molière. Anglophones who want to see it can make use of the subtitling tablets available for free. This review is in English to persuade anglophones that this is worth doing. French theatre is meeting you half way – it’s up to you to just show up******

In a rough sense, this show explores a summer francomanitoban writer Gabrielle Roy spent at a cabin in Québec. This description, while accurate, doesn’t capture the nature of this show. If many plays come across as movie-like or acted out novels, this one is poetry: sensory, engaging, and appealing to the emotions over the calculating brain. If you can let yourself enter this world, you are in for a treat – escapism in the best sense of the word, as in takes you to a place outside of yourself. Is it pretentious if I say it’s as much a theatrical experience as a play? I apologize. It may still be true.

It’s also possibly one of the best plays to see if you are depending on the subtitling tablets. Texts are not the primary element, and you can definitely appreciate a lot of the show without needing to follow words. When the text matters, you have time to really feel the words in your body.

The storytelling in this piece is highly multimedia. If you can put aside any need for the suspense of a linear plot, it is well worth it for the experience. The show opens gently, slowly with the rituals of bringing in a suitcase and setting up the cottage. From there, the show explores the imagination of the writer at this one point in time. On one hand you have the figure of Gabrielle Roy, inhabiting this cabin space over the summer, sometimes writing and sometimes just experiencing. Then you also have the use of some really exquisite transparencies, handled artfully to show nature in motion. To be totally honest, I would have watched an hour of those drawings out the window without further plot. There is also puppetry both simple and complex, from simple moving parts to a full doll representing her sister. Finally, there are scenes of Gabrielle interacting with her neighbour, fully immersed in a world more active and less contemplative than that she describes. The result is both sensual and meditative, an opportunity to spend time a place of deep creativity.

The result is that you have a show which manages to capture a way of looking at the world, a perspective. This becomes the tension that draws us through to the end: what did Gabrielle Roy see that summer that made this time so exceptional? It honours creativity and the space to see the world in a new light, however that manifests.

My overwhelming impression of this piece is that it is beautifully crafted. Craftsmanship, to me, means that it has good bones – is put together well in a way which needs to be respected for an objective point of you. Whether or not you like this show, (and I did), you have to admire the expertise it displays. Every element is well considered, from costumes, to stage display, to each moving part. Nobody makes anything like this without really putting in the time to develop their craft. This is a show that blurs the line between visual art and theatre. Any scene could easily be frozen to offer a tableau rich with narrative.

In watching Cet été qui chante, literally “this summer that sang”, I wanted to invite every fringe performer I’ve ever met to learn from this show. I want them to learn how to have fun with materials, how to play with different art mediums, and above all to blend these storytelling techniques into their own multisensory performances. This is experimenting to find a theatrical voice. This is a unique take on performance which needs to be learned from.

Beautiful. Deliberate. Poetic. If you love theatre, you don’t have to like this show in order to benefit from seeing it.