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Culture Theatre

Albertine In Five Times

ALBERTINE IN FIVE TIMES by Michel Tremblay, directed by Micheline Chevrier (Shaw). At Court House Theatre, Niagara-?on-?the-?Lake. Runs in rep to October 10. $30-?$110, stu/srs discounts. 1-?800-?511-?7429. See listing. Rating: NNNN


Michel Tremblay’s Albertine In Five Times uses the framework of a memory play to shape a kaleidoscope of broken dreams and angry explosions.[rssbreak]

For its first staging of this fine Quebec playwright’s work, the Shaw Festival commissioned a new translation from Linda Gaboriau and gave the production to director Micheline Chevrier, who understands the essence of Tremblay’s women – their strengths as well as their weaknesses.

The play takes us into the mind of 70-?year-?old Albertine (Patricia Hamilton), who, newly moved into a seniors’ home, reflects on who she was at four other ages in her life: 30 (Marla McLean), 40 (Jenny L. Wright), 50 (Mary Haney) and 60 (Wendy Thatcher). All five Albertines interact with sister and confidante Madeleine (Nicolá Correia-?Damude), who’s had a happier life than Albertine.

Over the course of the play we’re given crystal-?hard details about Albertine’s children, husband, mother and the source of the dreadful rage that floods through and often incapacitates Albertine. In fact, rage is a word that constantly recurs it’s a blinding darkness that overcomes all of the Albertines.

Each generation hides something (as much from herself as from others). The youngest Albertine has escaped to the calming countryside to forget a bad incident at home the 50-?year-?old decides she’ll be a rebel and enjoy her life the 60-?year-?old flees into a world of pills.

It’s a bit like reconstructing a shattered portrait of stubborn Albertine. Eventually we see her various sides and the cycles of fury and self-?willed forgetting that rule her life. There’s also the suggestion that by assembling the jigsaw pieces of her past, she may find peace.

Chevrier encourages subtlety from her actors, and echoed words and gestures tie together the different generations. Haney’s expert at revealing the acid lying beneath her 50-?year-?old Albertine’s optimism, and there’s a sense of wonder and freshness in McLean’s 30-?year-?old. Thatcher’s self-?centred pill-?popper manages to be a figure of mystery as well as a woman who speaks her mind. I wish there were more variety in Wright’s isolated 40-?year-?old, who rarely leaves her note of anger.

In some ways, Correia-?Damude has the hardest role, having to shift ages to accommodate whichever version of her sister she speaks to she’s more successful in some instances than others.

It’s Hamilton, though, who holds the production together as the eldest Albertine, the repository of all the memories. She played Albertine at 50 in the play’s 1985 English premiere at the Tarragon, and here her 70-?year-?old is magisterial but warm, a woman initially caught up by a lifetime of anger but who salvages some truths from her younger selves. It’s a gorgeous, emotionally grounded performance.

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