LES BELLES-SOEURS – REVIEW OF 2023 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Les Belles-Soeurs is an iconic Canadian play that gives a penetrating and piercingly accurate portrait of Quebec society in the 1960s. The Stratford Festival gives us a superb production of Michel Tremblay’s play which premiered in Montreal in 1968. It is directed by Esther Jun and has a cast of fifteen actors representing working class women.   

Germaine Lauzon (Lucy Peacock) has won one million stamps and they have just been delivered to her home. She is deliriously and deliciously happy dreaming and planning what she will do with her wealth. Her working-class imagination takes flight but it stays in her kitchen and her house. New appliances and furnishings are basically what she dreams of buying.

Germaine invites her sisters Rose Ouimet and Gabrielle Jodoin, her sister-in-law Thérèse Dubuc, and friends and neighbours. Her sister Pierrette Guérin is not invited but she comes anyway. Together with Germaine’s daughter Linda, and friends and neighbours, there are fifteen women in her kitchen to paste the stamps in books.

Members of the company in Les Belles-Soeurs.

Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou.

The women discuss a huge array of subjects over the course of the play with rancor, candor, humour and pathos. What evolves is a picture of the lives of the women and by extension a portrait of Quebec society of the period.

Tremblay draws the women’s characters succinctly and beautifully. Aside from the individual characteristics of the women we get a  depiction of the social order that they occupy. There are differences among the women but they all seem to be living lives of quiet desperation.

Lucy Peacock gives a powerful performance as Germaine, a woman married to an alcoholic husband with two children who do not listen to her. But having won one million stamps she sees a way out and for some hours she dreams of a better life after acquiring the things that money can bring. Her dream comes crashing around her when her friends want to share in her “happiness” and things do not turn out as she imagined. I will not disclose the end of the play.

Seana McKenna gives a superb performance as Rose Ouimet, a religious widow who is concerned about other-worldly matters.  

Allison Edwards-Crewe plays a flamboyant Pierette who works in a bar and is shunned by the other women. The young Lise (Marissa Orjalo) reveals that she is pregnant, a shocking state at the time. Pierette has the decency to offer to find a doctor to perform an abortion instead of getting a back-alley procedure that seemed to be the only choice. Pierette reveals that shocking news that Angeline frequents the club where she works. The news sends shockwaves among the religious women and they shun the pathetic Angeline.    

Irene Poole plays Therese who arrives with her mother-in-law Olivine (Diana Leblanc) and proceeds to abuse the poor woman who is slumped in a wheelchair and makes unwelcome noises.   Lisette de Courval likes nice clothes and sex but not with her husband. Jealousy is a common underlying characteristic of most of the women and combined with greed it is the catalyst that brings the finale of the play.

From left: Irene Poole, Shannon Taylor, Lucy Peacock, 

Jennifer Villaverde, Seana McKenna and Jane Luk in 

Les Belles-Soeurs. Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou

Religion plays an important role in the lives of all of them and they kneel and cross themselves when they hear the rosary on the radio. One method of escaping their reality is to play bingo at the church and there is an extended and hilarious scene of that pastime.

Tremblay provides a number of monologues, choral passages one might say, where the lights are dimmed and a spotlight is shone on a character who speaks about her life directly to the audience. This is a brilliant way of pacing the play which otherwise is a noise fest with the fifteen women speaking cacophonously at times.

The set design by Joanna Yu shows a simple 1960s kitchen with a table and chairs. Michelle Bohn’s costumes represent working class clothes that are suitable for the era and the production.

Les Belles-Soeurs is a richly-layered play that appears very simple. Director Esther Jun handles a talented cast judiciously and expertly through the crowded dialogues and movements as well as the monologues.  It is a superb production of a theatrical landmark.

___________________________

Les Belle-Soeurs by Michel Tremblay opened on August 25 and continues until October 28, 2023, at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario www.stratfordfestival.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press