Wildside Festival Energetic Opening
Macbeth Muet. Photo Sophie Gagnon Bergeron
Once a year the Centaur Theatre hosts The Wildside festival and allows more experimental work to be mounted in its smaller theatre. I went to see CRIME AFTER CRIME and MACBETH MUET.
The first show was a clever send up of crime film and television and the beginning of this performance was truly funny. It was particularly poignant to have a detective named “Beige” who was colour blind in the “film Noir” section. The group made much of this issue when they did their MacGyver shtick and of course the detective could not de-activate bombs by pulling out the red wire. There were moments of terrific cleverness, as when hangers become a Star Wars invasions. The greater part of the performance was about films which I have not seen, and full of music I do not particularly like, played much too loudly! This may be generational, and the younger audience kept laughing, but at the end, even they got tired. It was so very long, and still worth seeing Kaitlin Morrow, who managed to give new energy to every role. The company, Sex-T-Rex needed some writers and a strong director to trim this work and make truly great.
Macbeth Muet La Fille du Latier avoided script problems by choosing a great work by Shakespeare and performing it mute! Clara Prevost and Jeremie Francoeur are magnificent as the doomed royal couple, but the biggest kudos go to Cedric Lord for production design and props. From the moment the play begins and those hands appear like giant spiders on the white table, this is a spell-binding production. There are specific moment which really were touching and no one has ever experienced so much sadness at the crushing of an egg on stage.
The genius of this production is that one can enjoy the simple and elegant plot as performed by two fantastic actors, because the narrative of this play is truly powerful. If you actually are familiar with the script, the strange and beautiful moments, like the scenes of the witches or Lady M’s mad scene (replete with doctor), this piece is stunningly brilliant. The actors are consistently delightful and at the end, the fight scene is quite astonishingly violent.
I will now attend anything performed by La Fille de Latier (The Milkman`s daughter) which is pretty funny as a name for the group. They have not only rendered one of my favourite plays in magnificent way, they have created a new genre, PROP THEATRE!
Still to come: Body So Florescent, The Gentle Art of Punishment, Sapientia, and Hyena Subpoena, the most entertaining one woman show ever.
The Wildside Festival takes place from January 8 – 20 at the Centaur Theatre (453 St François Xavier). Details HERE.
