Rouge GueuleText Étienne Lepage / Direction Claude Poissant Théâtre PÀP Québec June 9 to June 11
Rouge Gueule, is the pleasure of offending your grand mother, it is the satisfaction of yelling at someone who has done nothing to you, it is the joy of amusing ourselves at the expense of others.
Wickedly subversive, deliciously provocative, this first play by Étienne Lepage throws an unflattering light on contemporary vacuity and disillusion in 17 hard-hitting sketches. A courageous wager, when we know how easy it is to provoke indignation in our politically-correct society. In this panic-play tinged with vitriol, ten characters spit out their secrets – men and women, adults and adolescents – obsessed by success, sex and appearances. One by one, they reveal their dark side, their fantasies and their perversions in a manner that is sometimes vulgar, sometimes humourous. Each one more abject and unsympathetic than the previous, they expose, with no apparent sense of shame, the taboos that we usually hide away in the innermost depths of our thoughts: the desire for gratuitous violence, sexual compulsions, disgust for others, threats of vengeance, hate-filled impulses and paranoid delusions. In the caustic tradition of in-yer-face theatre, the inexhaustible logorrhea of the characters in Rouge Gueule becomes a weapon with which they lash out against anything that moves in order to protect themselves and frighten off potential aggressors. To give life to these bursts of verbal aggression, Lepage found the ideal accomplice in Claude Poissant. A director renowned for his rebellious audacity, his subtle and rhythmic interpretation, completed by a dynamic cast, provides this incisive work with enough verve to shake even the most Zen among us.
Text Étienne Lepage
BANG! The play opens with a horrendous screaming rant. The kind we rarely witness because it usually takes place behind closed doors. Infuriated, a young woman vents her spite, raging at someone who is absent, whom we assume is the man who abandoned her. Foaming at the mouth, sputtering venomously, she spits out sordid threats of vengeance punctuated by supplications and protestations of love. The tone is established and the spectator, fascinated and horrified, cannot escape the ferociousness of this in-yer-face theatre. It is jarring, it is brutal, it overflows with vulgarity, it is Rouge Gueule by the young Montreal playwright Étienne Lepage.
In 17 short sketches of a rare intensity, 10 characters, each one more warped than the one before, fly into a rage, screaming out uncensored whatever crosses their mind and revealing a string of sexual fantasies, destructive impulses, obsession with recognition and scatological perversions. André is caught in his son's bedroom arousing himself with magazines featuring adolescent girls, Jean claims responsibility for the ecological catastrophe threatening humanity, Francis confides his attraction for a secret part of the anatomy of a temptress in his class… Narcissists, megalomaniacs, deeply detestable, these monuments of superficiality display a remarkable lack of empathy. In this abrasive social satire where the taboos of personal life are thrown aside along with the scruples that usually mark life in society, they all give free rein to the heartfelt but politically incorrect things that we all keep to ourselves. The disturbing revelations that the characters indulge in range from a disconcerting lightness to rebellious, in conformity with the author's intention: "One of my main sources of inspiration is provocation. Shaking things up. We live in a coddled society, and in trying to avoid hurting anyone we become liars, tendentious, affected, hypocrites, fearful and fragile. I truly believe that by provoking people, we force them to fight back, we force them to refuse, to defend themselves and to think. It is the idea of a kick in the ass." (translation) Lepage tests the spectator's composure. Made up of dialogues that are often cut short, discomforting soliloquies or asides, the play provokes strong reactions, confusion, disgust. Last fall, when it was presented at Espace Go in Montreal, Rouge Gueule left no one indifferent. People love it or hate it, there seems to be no middle ground. To avoid esthetic redundancy and to better convey the intensity of Lepage's message, director Claude Poissant has imagined a very subtle interpretation, seeking to magnify the vitality rather than emphasizing the content which is already quite explicit. On stage – a sort of abandoned no-man’s land, a vast vacant setting where the voices of the characters echo – fragmented snapshots of life flash by at a frantic rhythm, carried by actors with burning presence and rare eloquence. Awarded a special mention by the jury for the Prix Gratien-Gélinas in 2009 for the quality of his writing, Étienne Lepage employs language that is unabashed and revealing, a language that Poissant wished to transform into a means of release. If it is excusable to nourish dark intimate thoughts, hearing them exposed on stage, seeing them enlarged by the magnifying glass of theatre, is an unsettling experience. Take to your heels if you have chaste ears. Come running if you have already felt shameful urges …
In FrenchThéâtre de la BordéeWednesday June 9 / 9 p.m.
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