Theatre Review by Christina Manolescu</MARQUEE>
Mainline Theatre is a significantly upgraded ‘indie’ performance venue on the Main just below Duluth, run by Jeremy Hechtman of the Montreal Fringe. Given the crush of crowds filling the reception area and snaking onto the sidewalk, before even the curtain lifted, comic thriller, Saving Céline, had already achieved the buzz and aura of success.
Especially memorable, and the undisputed ‘evening star’ is Mado Lamotte as the pseudo-Céline Dion. Also noteworthy are Mado’s domineering mother, played by Alexandra Valassis, and Mado’s equally bitchy rival, drag-queen artiste, Mike Payette, who in the competing persona of Whitney Houston, muscles her way onstage.
Mado, skilled impersonator of the arch-feminine body and soul, blends stage affectation with ‘Chaplinesque’ flair. The real-life Mado (for whom the role of pseudo-Céline was originally created) is a drag-queen diva of exceptional longevity who runs a successful Cabaret on Montreal’s Main. Her alter ego, thespian and author, Luc Provost, has for over two decades developed the cult personality, Mado, into a veteran of Quebecois popular media.
This is actually Mado’s debut on the English stage; so whether deliberately or not, the ‘Anglo’ lines get hilariously mangled into their native ‘Franco’ intonation. The unfolding plot is convoluted, studded with burlesque sound cues, sudden blackouts and red herrings. It is witty, outrageous, entertaining and absurd.
Costume design, too, is quaint, glitzy, at times endearingly ‘cheesy.’ A potent sound track, in thriller mode, creates an audible race against time. Stark lighting and random musical blasts jostle the story headlong. A translucent stage backdrop both reveals and conceals. It’s all about the artifice of sustained mystery; fluid props that appear and disappear; a surround of pitch blackness where dark secrets occur.
Yet another dimension is created by the prominent onstage ‘silver screen.’ Competing for the audience’s attention, it becomes a minor ‘tongue-in-cheek’ character in its own right. Its flood of screen images are both significant and bizarre; they serve to emphasize, divert attention, raise the comedic stakes, and also heighten the pitch of the real-time burlesque happening just alongside. We witness the fluid merging of personalities and the melding of the sexes. A total of six actors perform all 25 roles, enforcing tight cohesion as they execute the rapid crossover between genders, costumes and shared roles.
Meanwhile, Mado’s drug-dispensing medic tries to get to the bottom of her woes, prescribing a pill for every ill. Despite his pedantic care, Mado’s fragile persona soon disintegrates. The replacement? Her stage idol, la grande Céline. Obsessive star-gazing amounts to the negation of self. With Mado, it’s the total substitution of self: hence, Mado consciously transforms into Céline.
The style of this theatre piece is outright vaudevillian, burlesque, with high-octane performances and doses of ribald sleaze. It casts an absurdist glance at our modern mass obsession with fame. At the same time come the corresponding mirror-images of emptiness, envy, mental instability and thirst for revenge. Cinematic images of violence ‘up the ante’ to the keenest levels of ‘artsy-terror’—so ghastly, indeed, they appear comic.
It is in this play that the neo-Shakespearean tradition of cross-dressing is brought up to speed: a bevy of drag-artistes on speed. In fact, the play does a lot of persistent and eclectic borrowing from contemporary Western culture—film, music and TV—with a nod and a wink to our media-engorged generation.
Its bare bones of a thriller plot is crafted piecemeal from our shared frame of reference: media stars, rock mania, Hitchcock horrors, shock&awe ‘slasher’ films, Raelian clone experimentation, pervasive drugs and psycho-babble: all elements that stretch and strain at the limits of credulity, wildly mixed into an absurdist soup that somehow speeds to a climax and (rather tenuous) resolution. But, at that point, who cares?
The grand finale is a rousing impersonation of celebrated ‘chanteuse’ Celine (alias triumphant Mado) onstage. By this time, the audience is thoroughly drawn into the action, cheering the performers along.
The international expertise behind this ‘one-of-a-kind’ production comes from UK-based writer and producer, Mark Watty, and director, David Pellegrini, from the United States. Theatre-goers will wish them warm welcome to Montreal.