by Yanik Comeau (Comunik Média / ZoneCulture)
When the pandemic started to slightly ease up ever so lightly, theatres, struggling to reinvent themselves and manoeuver to stay alive while grappling with the new health measures, turned to projects with smaller casts, even one-character plays. Although this could have been a depressing and sad trend, it actually helped theatre stay alive and since the pandemic has subsided, this new “tradition” is continuing, allowing companies to offer premium quality productions at a lesser cost and therefore helping companies rebuild their audiences while not breaking the bank.
Obviously, smaller casts also mean less work for actors so this is not a perfect solution and shouldn’t become the norm but, in the grand scheme of things, since the pandemic, some amazing one-character plays have been created or newly mounted, including Duceppe and Centaur’s King Dave, Anne-Marie Olivier’s Maurice, Prospero’s Homicide, L’Activité’s La Dernière Cassette, Centaur’s A Play for the Living in A Time of Extinction which was then translated into French and performed at La Licorne, Espace GO's Tremblements, La Licorne’s Les Étés souterrains, Jake Epstein’s Boy Falls from the Sky … and the list goes on and on.
Right now, at Centaur Theatre, you can see Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre’s production of Diane Flacks’ Guilt (A Love Story) which definitely fits into this new trend. During the pandemic, exceptional actress Flacks wrote this charming, moving, brilliant autobiographical piece for herself and charmed the pants off Toronto audiences, including Centaur Artistic Director Eva Holmes who immediately made a place for it in Centaur’s 2023-2024 lineup.
Directed by Alisa Palmer, this one-woman show is a total delight. Flacks cleary wrote the piece to allow her multiple talents to shine (she dances, excels at accents and voices, makes us laugh, brings a tear to our eye) while hitting on a bunch of universal themes that never get old: love, family, motherhood, guilt, balancing work and a home life,… For 75 glorious minutes, Flacks humorously profound piece pulls the audience into her guilt-ridden life as a Jewish lesbian actress, daughter, partner, mother, playing a stage version of herself, her mother, her sons,… and the caged racoon who lives in her chest!
Totally at ease in Jung-Hye Kim’s minimalistic yet efficient set, smartly directed by Palmer and creatively coached for movement by Rebecca Harper, Diane Flacks hits all the right buttons and makes everyone in the audience want to be her friend, her ally.
Until March 30th on the main stage of the Centaur, this show is a beautiful present to Montreal’s theatre-going audience and a great piece to bring somebody who thinks theatre is snooty and boring to.
The show will then spend a few weeks at Winnipeg's Manitoba Theatre Centaur from April 3rd to 20th.
Guilt (A Love Story) by Diane Flacks Directed by Alisa Palmer Starring Diane Flacks Movement coach: Rebecca Harper Set and Costume Designer: Jung-Hye Kim Lighting Designer: Leigh Ann Vardy Associate Lighting Designer: Aurora Torok Sound Designer: Deanna H. Choi Associate Sound Designer: Jacob Lin Stage Manager: Sandy Punkett Apprentice Stage Manager: Angela Mae Bago A Tarragon Theatre production (Toronto) From March 12th to 30th, 2024 (duration: 75 minutes no intermission) Centaur Theatre, 453, rue Saint-François-Xavier, Vieux-Montréal Reservations: 514-288-3161 Information: https://centaurtheatre.com/shows/guilt-a-love-story/ Photos: Cylla von Tiedemann