As actor Peter Kelly pops through the red curtains and into the spotlight, a little old lady in the seventh row of the stalls says an unselfconscious ''hello''. Sweet as such an incident may be, in terms of crimes against theatre, such
chit-chat is ordinarily up there with mobile phones and paper-rustles. As an accidental pre-cursor to Michel Tremblay's autobiographical meditation on his mother, here given a fresh indigenous translation by Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay, it's beautifully appropriate, both acknowledging and cutting through the situation's artifice.
Tremblay takes the audience through his back pages in what is part homage, part purging, part reconciliation with Nana, the woman who gave him everything in terms of the power to stretch the truth into flights of fancy, and effectively become a playwright. As Eileen McCallum's yarn-spinning largesse as Nana masks her inner pain, she can only watch as her 10- year-old mummy's boy grows up to become an artist, just like those other-worldly types on the telly.
Set for what looks like a TV chat show, at first glance, Muriel Romanes's production looks like it belongs in a studio. Tremblay plays so many theatrical tricks, however, that, by the end, it's deliciously and archly epic enough to stand next to the old masters that Kelly's curtain-raising monologue promises it won't resemble. In terms of pulling heartstrings, Tremblay is a master, and here he gets up close and personal more than ever before. Kelly is ruffled charm personified, but McCallum is a revelation in a work of transcendent beauty that suggests Tremblay is at peace with his loss at last.
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