Le Soulier

At Studio 16 until March 9, 2019
Tickets from $26 at www.seizieme.ca or 604-736-2616

Posted February 28, 2019

Within moments you just know Le Soulier (The Shoe) comes out of Quebec. It’s not just the title, the surtitles or the dialogue delivered in that clipped Quebecois French but there’s just this je ne sais quoi – a quirky yet pithy style and content that has the stamp of francophone Canada all over it. Théâtre la Seizième is proud to present the world premiere of David Paquet’s new play here in Vancouver.

Le Soulier gets you coming and going: Benoit, an eight-year-old boy, has had a toothache for three days. Not funny. Faced with going to the dentist with his mother Mélanie, he’s having a meltdown. He writhes, he shakes, he goes through tantrum stages well-known by his mother – Neo-Francis Bacon, Epileptic King Kong and Electric Musical Chair. Hilarious.  They go to the dentist. Hélène, the receptionist, is perky and weird: she keeps cooing over a box containing a three-legged creature (she tells us) so ugly, she says, that it’s beautiful. Enter the dentist; he’s even weirder  than his receptionist with his head bound up in bandages. This is his first day “back at work” – from what? Brain surgery?  Benoit, meanwhile, is absorbed in drawing pictures which, it turns out, are images of ways his mother might meet a violent death. Funny but sad.

And so it goes. Laughable on the surface; not so laughable when you really think about it.

In his program notes Paquet writes, “With Le Soulier, I wanted to create a bipolar comedy on the accompaniment [sic] of suffering . . . For some, happiness is a given. For others, it is a work in progress. For a few, it is a battle. A never-ending one.” Benoit’s mother fears her child was born unhappy and worries that there is nothing she can do to make him happy. Perhaps her life would be better without him. Now there’s sorrow for you.

Under the direction of Esther Duquette and Gilles Poulin-Denis (the same team who gave us Straight Jacket Winter), there are four stellar performances here. Joey Lespérance is the dentist who uses houseplants and  Zumba to calm his nerves. Choreographed by Noam Gagnon, you’ve never seen Zumba like this before. Trés trés jerky and bizarre. Adult but short Félix Beauchamp is Benoit and  you can almost hear his teeth rattling as he shakes violently during his character’s meltdowns. France Perras, in leopard-patterned tights and later in leopard-patterned leisurewear, is the hard-drinking, flamboyant receptionist Hélène who persuades Benoit’s mother Mélanie to let her hair down, live a little, have another drink. Annie Lefebvre is Benoit’s at-her-wits-end mother.

Le Soulier is not straight-ahead drama; it’s surreal with bits of magic realism thrown in. This cast of four nails the style: it’s not farcical, it’s a meticulous blend of comic and tragic. And it’s definitely not sentimental or saccharine.

Set design by Drew Facey, lit by Itai Erdal, provides three, draped-off locations: the dentist’s waiting room, the dentist’s office and the dentist’s home with its adjoining greenhouse. There’s a wonderful effect late in the play with the dentist’s greenhouse plants.

Théâtre la Seizième, founded in 1974, is the major French language, professional theatre company in British Columbia. And here’s the good news for those who aren’t bilingual: every show has several English-language surtitled performances.  Check the performance schedule. The company operates out of Studio 16 at 1555 West 7^th where there’s street parking or it’s a short walk up from 4^th Avenue or down from Broadway for those coming by bus. And there are bike racks for the hardy.

While Théâtre la Seizième used to be a well-kept secret, some dynamite, Jessie award-winning productions have made it popular. Just to top it off, the company shares the building with intimate, low-lit Café Salade de Fruits; the moules et frites  look and smell fantastic. Reservations definitely required.

Fresh, original and off-the-wall, Le Soulier is not for everyone but it does what all good theatre should do: it engages the imagination.  I and my guest, raised in Montreal,  fell for its fresh, original charm.

Quebecois playwrights definitely do theatre differently from playwrights in the rest of Canada and to that I say, “Vive la différence”.