Le malentendu
Photo: Mathieu Taillardas
Théâtre Française de Toronto/Le malentendu (The Misunderstanding), written by Albert Camus, directed by Karine Ricard, Theatre Centre Mainspace. closes Nov. 15.
Toronto French Theatre’s production of Le malentendu is simply magnificent. There is no other word to describe the play except to say it is also devastating. It is impossible to leave that theatre unaffected. In fact, I am crying as I write this review.
Sadly, the play is closing this weekend so there are only just a few performances left.
In 1957, French author Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In citing the award, the committee noted that in time of terror and lies, he took the side of the individual. He fought for justice. He defended human dignity.
That is not the Albert Camus of Le malentendu.
As a matter of fact, to call Camus an existentialist is optimistic. To even say he is an absurdist is optimistic. Because the Albert Camus of this play, the English title being The Misunderstanding, is nihilistic. Simply put, this play is one of the darkest theatrical experiences I have ever witnessed. It is the absence of humanity.
At the end of the play, the character of Maria has just found out that her husband’s family has murdered him. Not only that, she has literally been beaten down by the words of her erstwhile sister-in-law Martha, who says, “I hope that somehow you turn to stone without any feelings because life is not worth living”.
And as this young woman, crumpled on the ground, who has just experienced five years of exquisite happiness with her now-dead husband, reaches up her hand to the silent butler of the inn, and cries, “Have pity on lovers who have been disunited”, he looks down on her and says, “No”, probably the cruellest line that was ever written in all of literature.
That is the final line of the play. That is not the Camus of 1957 defending human dignity because context is everything.
Camus wrote Le malentendu during 1942 and 1943 during the Nazi occupation of France, perhaps the country’s darkest hour and one of the lowest points of the author’s life.
And the plot of the play, understandably, is dark to the extreme.
A mother (Christina Tannous) and daughter Martha (Béatrice René-Décarie) with the help of a silent butler (Mehdi Rostami), run an inn where they kill lonely travellers to get money. The dream is to use this money as a passage out of the bleak part of the world in which they live. There is no sunshine here. There is one rose that blooms then withers. The dream is to get to the sea, and the sunshine, and the flowers, and the birds, and the beach. And this one final traveller will be the last murder
In a twist of fate, this final traveller is the prodigal son Jan (Ziad Ek) who has returned to the family in disguise.
Camus has set up the play very interestingly in two parts which almost acts like a sucker punch.
In the first section we get a loving scene between Jan and his young wife Maria (Jenny Brizard), her begging to stay with him at the inn and him ordering her to go because he feels a duty towards his family. We also hear conversations between Martha and her mother waffling back-and-forth about the murder.
There is quite a lovely scene before Jan drinks the tea that Martha brings, unbeknownst to her mother who has begun to have serious doubts about this murder. It is a dream sequence where his wife appears as an exotic dancer, which convinces Jan to leave that night. and come back the next day with Maria and finally tell the truth.
But of course, he drinks the tea and falls asleep, and they send the sleeping man into the river where he will drown in what is a very nifty bit of impressive stagecraft.
Throughout the scenes, the silent butler strums on his mandolin, creating the cinematic score like a clock keeping time with musical chords. The music is not tuneless, but insistent, always there, always in the background, almost like another character in the play. In fact, as recorded sound it carries on as you walk out of the theatre at the end.
And then Camus hits you with that sucker punch.
The minute the body of Jan is thrown into the river, a gigantic shift happens. Heartbreak and betrayal begin. The play becomes a vice, a grip that won’t let go. The theatre itself becomes an emotional prison. Harrowing moment follows harrowing moment.
The silent old man brings Jan’s passport, and Martha discovers that the mother cared more for the absent son than for the daughter who stayed. Martha cries, “But I was here and he left. You didn’t even recognize him”, and Martha’s worth collapses.
And then Maria appears. Martha tells her with glee about the murder of her husband. She cuts Maria down to nothing because life is worthless.
There are so many levels of misunderstanding that Camus has layered into the fabric of the plot – Jan conceals his identity, the mother and Martha think Jan is just another traveller, Jan assumes that poverty has worn his family down and his return will bring them relief, Maria thinks Jan will reveal his identity immediately, the mother misunderstands Martha’s determination to murder the traveller.
Le malentendu is beyond absurdism. It is nihilism beyond reckoning. When Maria raises her hand and asks for pity, that heartless “No” is beyond indifference. It is the negation of all human worth. It is the extinction of compassion. It is the moral vacuum of existence.
That is the Albert Camus of Le malentendu.
Le malentendu
Photo: Mathieu Taillardas
To mount a complex play of this nature you need gifted Actors and there is not a weak link in this cast.
Jenny Brizard as Maria: charming, playful, wilful, her shattering collapse is total. Christina Tannous as the mother: sympathetic, weary, and then finding the incredible gut-wrenching energy of total grief before utter emotional destruction. Mehdi Rostami as the silent butler: a stately, implacable, charismatic, menacing presence. Ziad Elk as Jan: calm and purposeful, perhaps the easiest role because it is the least emotional but also the solid anchor that holds the ensemble together.
And then there is the remarkable Béatrice René-Décarie as Martha: hard, determined, ruthless in the introductory scenes, but extraordinary in the ending with her mother as her insides pour out as if she is being obliterated from within.
Karine Ricard’s direction is sublime. She understands the exquisite delicacy of the build: the so-called ordinary scenes with the gradual rise of tension, and then the explosion of cruelty and hysteria and destruction and obliteration resulting in cataclysm. A brilliant ensemble, brilliantly directed.
John Doucet’s beautifully detailed minimal set: sparse white chairs on a white floor that transform into a bedroom (with clever trickery for river transportation), set against a wall of dark panels with two doors, the panels of which slowly disappear until only scaffolding remains overlooking an empty landscape.
Glenn Davidson’s moody lighting washing the set in semi darkness until the ending with Maria and the Old Man facing back. Melanie McNeill’s costumes: exotic, timeless, peasant-like, from anywhere and nowhere.
At the beginning, the mother sings what appears to be a haunting ancient folk song but is credited to Rostami with lyrics by Geneviève Cholette. There is also gorgeous vocalise harmony when the two women dispatch Jan into the river – absolutely magical despite the grim task.
And mention should be made of Martha Lenoir’s excellent English surtitles.
Everything about this production in terms of theatrical values is a class act.
I applaud TfT for having the courage to put on a work of such utter desolation, a play that is truly theatre of the void, a landscape without hope, but also one that has the power to cause an emotional avalanche of despair within the viewer.
And yet, in doing so has given us a production that is as magnificent as it is devastating.