Monthly Archive for November, 2008

Nothing Lost in Translation

Published
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rea
on November 7, 2008
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Nothing Lost In Translation

Uptown, November 6th, 2008

French-language playwright Marc Prescott’s Encore is adapted in English - and it’s still every bit as moving

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Relatively unknown by anglophone theatre audiences in Manitoba, Winnipegger Marc Prescott is nonetheless an award-winning French-language playwright, actor and director. Theatre Projects Manitoba is attempting to change this dichotomy with its first production of the 2008-09 season, a translation, by Prescott, of his play, Encore.

Encore focuses on a couple, Sir and Ma’am, who we initially encounter celebrating their first anniversary. In an attempt to never forget their courtship’s first blushes of love or take their love for granted, Ma’am has decided that they should re-enact the script of their first meeting on every anniversary. Sir complies, more out of acquiescence than understanding, and it is here the story begins.

We observe the couple over six anniversaries that span their first to their 50th on which they revisit their first meeting. With this streamlined simplicity, Prescott weaves the story of their lives through better and worse, including the anxiousness of new parenthood, the disinterest of a waning relationship, the bitterness of divorce and, ultimately, the reconciliation of a love that may have been abandoned but was never forgotten. Throughout this process the words of their scripted love remain the same, but their meaning morphs from a means of inclusion to a weapon of separation and back again, while the couple’s roles within it alter.

As the couple, Arne MacPherson and Monique Marcker seamlessly transform throughout this life together. Marcker’s shrill urgency as Ma’am on the first anniversary is both humorous and heartbreaking; she wields their love script like a talisman against future unhappiness. And Sir’s initial bumbling of it is elegantly brought full circle by the end of the play by MacPherson. Both actors embody their characters with the ease of recognition, and while certain plot points may be a bit too obvious (MacPherson’s hockey-watching drunk seems too pedestrian for the story), they carry on with heart-wrenching realism.

The gorgeously simple set offers a wonderful physical manifestation of the couple’s journey; the table and chairs from the lounge where they first met are tugged down a path by the couple, lined at each stop by symbolic representations of each anniversary (crumpled paper for the first anniversary, wood chips for the fifth, fallen leaves for the 50th). The sound of Marcker’s high heel angrily crunching down on broken china is a harrowing echo of the ruin of the couple’s marriage at 20 years,

Director Anne Hodges keeps the actors and the pace on target, allowing the scenes room to breathe but never letting the proceedings lag. We see only brief snapshots of a lifetime of love, pain and transformation, yet these glimpses offer a satisfying and moving window into the relationship of Sir and Ma’am.

Encore is a satisfyingly touching portrayal of a love that weathers the damages inflicted by lovers who, through a lifetime together and apart, finally realize the sanctity of it.
— Barb Stewart

Uptown Review

Can I get an Encore?

Published
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rea
on November 6, 2008
in News
. Closed

Can I get an encore?

Theatre Projects Manitoba kicks off their season with a crowd-pleasing play by a bad boy playwright

Brittany Thiessen, The Uniter

Uniter preview
The English-language debut of a play by the self-proclaimed “bad boy of Franco-Manitoban theatre” kicks off Theatre Projects Manitoba’s season this week.

Written by Marc Prescott, Encore is a romantic comedy that follows a couple from their first meeting to their 50 anniversary.

The play “goes across all different categories,” Prescott said, adding it appeals to men and women of all ages because the subject matter is easy to relate to: relationships.

In Encore, a couple played by Arne Macpherson and Monique Marcher is shown on six of their anniversaries. Each time, they say the exact same things to one another.

Even though they’re saying the exact same thing every time, the words take on different meanings as time passes and the characters age, Prescott explained.

The subject matter is a departure for the self-described “bad boy,” whose material typically includes sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Prescott, who is also an actor, director, designer and humour columnist, originally wrote the play in French. After successful performances by professional theatres in Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal, Prescott translated the play into English.

“I don’t feel as if I lost anything,” Prescott said when asked if any aspect of the play was lost in the translation. He added that the French language has a certain romantic quality English doesn’t quite have, but that the play is just as strong in English.

Ardith Boxall, artistic director for Theatre Projects Manitoba, said beginning the season with a “crowd-pleasing play” like Encore, allows the company – which is dedicated to the development and production of Manitoba plays and artists – to perform edgier material throughout the rest of the season.

After Encore, the company’s season continues in March with Age of Arousal, which is, according to Boxall, a “big sexy Victorian party.” The season concludes in May with In the Chamber.

Boxall said that Encore is the most “tried and true play” of the season.

Encore runs from Oct. 30 to Nov. 9 at the Rachel Browne Theatre (211 Bannatyne Ave.).

Love, From Rapture to Rupture

Published
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admin
on November 2, 2008
in News
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Love, From Rapture to Rupture

by Kevin Prokosh

from the Winnipeg Free Press - Nov 1, 2008
It’s taken 83 years for a locally written Cercle Molière play to be translated for the mainstream English theatre audience.

That’s a pity, given that Encore, the first script imported from St. Boniface to downtown Winnipeg, turns out to be such a clever, insightful meditation on love and marriage. It makes those on this side of the Red River wonder what we have been missing all these years.

Theatre Projects Manitoba took the bold step to commission francophone playwright Marc Prescott to pen an English version of his 2003 romantic comedy, and deserves kudos for outing this overlooked work. Don’t be surprised if it soon becomes a popular play in English Canada, given its commercial accessibility and economy of cast.

The premise is brilliantly simple: A nameless couple chart their 50-year relationship by recreating their first encounter on significant anniversaries in their lives. Ma’am is a novelist and hopeless romantic who desperately wants to hold onto the passion of that magic moment forever. She writes their dialogue and is a stickler that Sir not deviate from his lines.

That is Ma’am’s fatal flaw. She thinks she can repeat the emotional intoxication of falling in love and, she is doomed to disappointment. She wants to be seduced by the exact same words and she gets her way, but time and circumstance alter their meaning and worth.

On their first anniversary, we encounter Ma’am reading and sipping wine in a bar. Sir wanders in with a pickup line about looking for his future wife. The repartee is almost Shakespearean in its flowery language, as Sir gushes about falling in love at first sight with his “gilded goddess” and being together until they are old and enfeebled.

Sir, portrayed by the ever-dependable Arne MacPherson, then launches into a 10-minute aria, rhapsodizing about their first kiss, which won spontaneous applause from the almost capacity opening-night crowd Thursday at the Rachel Browne Theatre (in the Crocus Building, 211 Bannatyne Ave.).

MacPherson, a veteran actor who rarely if ever dons such a stylish business suit, cleans up well to play Sir, a man who wants to participate in his wife’s annual game but soon sees the pointlessness of living in the past. Monique Marcker partners well with MacPherson as a woman in love with love. Her character’s body language italicizes her overt passion, impatience and resentment.

For the fifth anniversary, the same two chairs and table set are moved symbolically down what looks to be the road of life. The couple’s attempt at re-starting their personal passion play is frequently interrupted by cellphone calls from Sir’s mother, who is babysitting their sick child. Sir is sex-starved and anxious for his due while Ma’am is distracted, and they run through her lines just to get it over with.

Prescott falls back on stereotypes in depicting their celebration of a decade together. Sir arrives late, preoccupied with the seventh game of the Stanley Cup playoffs. There is a decidedly mocking tone to Ma’am’s words and she lashes out with the rude description of the favourite sexual position of hockey-obsessed husbands. His lack of interest portends a breakup at the intermission.

That is confirmed in Act 2 when an intoxicated Sir, drinking on a park bench, and a bitter Ma’am repeat their meeting separately on their 20th anniversary. Both are regretful and confused at how barely they know each other.

They meet for the silver and golden anniversaries, and those oft-repeated words have taken on completely new meanings. The come-on line of Sir looking for his wife is transformed when he appears senile. What was once used to woo now wounds or saddens.

Director Ann Hodges stages a clean, well-paced production of Encore, which has a men-are-from-Mars, women-from-Venus vibe. Prescott shows us the folly of clinging to the past and the importance of continually seducing your spouse.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca