MONTREAL - Yet another Michel Tremblay play has been adapted as a musical. The newborn Le Chant de Sainte Carmen de la Main, based on his play Sainte Carmen de la Main, has already sold an estimated 30,000 tickets and a three-month tour has been booked for early 2014.
The last Tremblay musical, Belles-soeurs, adapted from his iconic play Les Belles-soeurs in 2011, will return for its third Quebec tour this fall. To date, Belles-soeurs has drawn 131,548 spectators. Meanwhile, an English production, with Broadway ambitions, is in the works.
The Belles-soeurs team of Ren? Richard Cyr, as adapter and director, and Daniel B?langer, as composer, reunited for Le Chant de Sainte Carmen de la Main. But they faced a tougher challenge, as Sainte Carmen is a tragedy and it?s structurally weak ? a lesser play.
From a musical theatre point of view, however, Sainte Carmen has two huge advantages: it?s about a singer and the story evokes a popular genre of music: country and western. Oddly, Cyr and B?langer have failed to capitalize on these assets, casting a formidable, well-known actress, Maude Gu?rin (as opposed to a professional singer), in the lead role and avoiding any hint of a country tune in the songs.
Carmen has just returned from Nashville, where she discovered that she can write her own songs ? about people she knows. When her manager/lover Maurice, who sent her to Nashville to improve her yodel, finds out that she?s determined to galvanize her public (largely made up of the hookers and drag queens who inhabit the Main) into political action, he orders her to return to her former repertoire. In refusing, she puts her life on the line.
It?s understandable that a Quebec composer who sets out to reinvent Sainte Carmen ? a symbol of nationalism ? wouldn?t want to feel obliged to look to Hank Williams for inspiration. B?langer is an accomplished artist with a huge following. Plus, his music was a good match for Belles-soeurs. However, in this play (which I first witnessed as a dramatic reading back in 1976, before its debut with Compagnie Jean Duceppe), Carmen has become a lyricist, not a composer, while in Nashville. Therefore, her music could carry at least a suggestion of C&W, which is just as legitimate a genre in Quebec as jazz or folk.
For the secondary role of Gloria, played by France Castel (known as a singer as well as an actress), B?langer has composed a number that carries the flavour of her specialty, Latino music. Why not for Carmen?
When Gu?rin finally gets to sing, in her dressing room, after the triumphant concert we don?t get to see, she?s emotionally engaging. (Cyr has left the concert an offstage mystery, as in the play, bypassing the ideal placement for a knock-?em-dead memorable song ? which the show sadly lacks.) But it?s Gu?rin?s passionate portrayal of Carmen that keeps us enthralled, rather than her singing.
Musically, it?s the chorus of 12 (with the four musicians joining in for the opening number) that impresses most, delivering anthemic, hymn-like numbers that rouse the spirit. (This is B?langer taking his cue from pop opera.)
Cyr has delivered the play with full dramatic impact, on a sparely furnished set with a backdrop of starry lights. The acting is superb. In addition to the radiant Gu?rin, there?s Beno?t McGinnis, whose final monologue as the hit man Toothpick stops time. Normand D?Amour is dead-on as Maurice, the crime boss too stupid to realize that the new hyper-local Carmen could revitalize his seedy Rod?o club. Sweet-voiced ?veline G?linas, as Carmen?s dresser, Bec-de-li?vre, is an understated wonder.
But Belles-soeurs still rules within the Tremblay musical canon.
Le Chant de Sainte Carmen de la Main, based on Michel Tremblay?s play, adapted by Ren? Richard Cyr (book and lyrics) with music by Daniel B?langer, continues at Th??tre du Nouveau Monde, 84 Ste-Catherine St. W., until June 22. Tickets cost $25 to $60. Call 514-866-8668 or visit tnm.qc.ca.
pdonnell@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: patstagepage
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