07.04.2010
One of the really fabulous things about theatre in this city is that no one seems to realize it is not supposed to be so diverse. Here we have a Dutch director, Jacqueline Van de Geer, mounting an Austrian play with local actors, Marie-Noelle Dufour, Caroline Fournier, and Michaela Di Cesare, in English.
Holy Mothers is a “pulp comedy,” engorged with provocative images, grotesque language and a bizarre plot. It is the theatrical equivalent of German Techno music played too loud in a small space, but it is riveting. Its author, Werner Schwab, is a legend in Europe. He was a sculptor, playwright and novelist reputed to have written most of his work drunk out of his mind to the accompaniment of the techno band Einsturzende Neubauten. He died very young of alcohol poisoning while listening to his friends play his beloved techno music.
The work is decidedly anti-bourgeois and much of the language scatological. In fact, it brings “toilet humour” to amazing new heights. Yet in spite of the lack of experience in the actors, Van de Geer has managed to keep the pace frenetic and the imagery over the top in a macabre non-realistic and truly engaging production.
This play confirms my suspicion that German language playwrights are trying to top their own morbid art form, Kindertottenlieder (Children Death Songs), so popular in the nineteenth century, with an even more horrific art form. I call it “rats nest wretched-ism” or the art of making life appear more miserable than it actually is. Schwab was the son of a cleaning lady who had been left by his Nazi father before he was born, and in a small Austrian town; his childhood could not have been a piece of Kuchen. He lived the first twelve years of his life in a basement apartment and only experienced humanity from the ground to the knees.
The three women in the play act out their fantasies and compete to tell their stories in a spiralling insanity which ricochets about the tiny stage. At one point Grete is in the throes of a passionate encounter while Mariedl reaches religious ecstasy in the bathroom and Erma has an epiphany over a liver sausage. Erma repeats at the conclusion that “they say that in this country everyone has a body in the basement.” This is about Austria where the bodies remain buried but not entirely forgotten.
The actors had the usual preview jitters but they managed to deliver inspired performances. If you can get down to Theatre Ste Catherine in the next week, treat yourself to a unique and provocative evening.
The Holy Mothers at the Theatre Sainte Catherine, 264 Ste Catherine Street. Box office: 514 284 3939. Through April 11. Matinees Sat and Sun 2 pm.
source:http://roverarts.com/2010/04/bringing-out-the-buried-bodies/
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