Just this past summer, I had the chance to see Robert Lepage’s clever direction and design on Macbeth at the Stratford Festival. I had written that the production needed time for audiences to come around to Lepage’s cinematic vision for the Scottish play.
Hopefully, some audiences did, but I have a strong feeling a good number didn’t.
Therefore, it was with intrigue, interest (and perhaps a tiny bit of trepidation?) I attended Lepage’s The Far Side of the Moon at the beautiful Bluma Appel Theatre on Front Street. Would the same sensory overload of cinema and theatre from Stratford be present on the Bluma Appel stage? Hmmmm….
‘Moon’ follows two brothers in Quebec City coping with their mother’s death. The Canadian Stage website also notes increasing political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The production is expected to offer a distinctly Canadian perspective. Additionally, Lepage, in his Director’s Note, shares his fascination with the last Apollo mission and his interest in certain chapters of space exploration.
Again, another hmmm. This is a lot to take in, even before entering the Appel theatre. Yet it sounds promising and intriguing.
Upon entering, the stage is completely dark, save for a large truss that rises and lowers, illuminating the stage. Is this what Lepage envisions as part of the enormous and vastness of space and the cosmos? Alright, I’ll buy it. I didn’t hear any pre-show music or sounds, so I’m left with a visual impact of space before me.
What follows is performance art by Olivier Normand, consisting of specific staged vignettes. Normand is a highly agile performer. In one vignette, he crawls into a washing machine. Another moment, he sits having a drink and smoking a cigarette in a bar, speaking to an unnamed bartender, and carrying on a conversation. There is some work with marionettes, but I would have liked to see more. At the end of the two-hour intermissionless performance, Normand takes a solo curtain call and then invites the backstage crew to step forward and take a bow along with him. Here’s proof that even what I thought was a solo show performance art work requires a great deal of preparation behind the scenes.
Sadly, it all feels incomplete at the end of the performance. I really wanted to make even a threadbare connection to the piece. It appears disjointed. I admire some of the stagecraft, but I could not connect or make any personal responses to the story’s narrative thread about rising political tensions.
That’s unfortunate, especially since Canada and the US are locked in political tensions, which I hope won’t mirror those of the Cold War.
Running time: approximately two hours with no intermission.
The production runs to November 16 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front Street East. Tickets: canadianstage.com.
