ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT STAGE
Romantic substance abuse → Robert Lepage’s Needles and Opium a theatrical odyssey and mammoth collaborative vision Story David Bateman
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n the late 1940s, Jean Cocteau left France to bring his work to new audiences in New York. At
the same time, Miles Davis made the same trip in reverse. For both, it was tural integration. In 1991, French Canada’s Robert LePage staged the first production of Needles and Opium, a kind of post-modern homage to the lives of Cocteau and Davis. Now Lepage’s masterwork is being re-mounted and re-imagined, a co-production between Canadian Stage, Ex Machina productions, and Théâtre du Trident and Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Quebec. Davis and Cocteau both struggled with drug use and the vein LePage traces in Needles and Opium bears grand symbolic properties. Cocteau’s experiences with opium and Davis’ heroin addiction give LePage’s theatrical odyssey its concise and seductive title as they are viewed through the lens of a contemporary late 20th-century Québécois who finds himself lonely and heartsick over the loss of a lover. Set in the Hotel La Louisiane in Paris, emotional turmoil ensues that reflects the addictive journeys that Cocteau and Davis followed at various periods in their lives. The overall theatrical drive becomes one of great musical leaps and poetic bounds as desperation forces the protagonist to take a harrowing look at his innermost emotions in order to release himself from love as a kind of romantic substance abuse, the substance of emotional dependence. Both Cocteau and Davis represent, from opposite sides of the Atlantic, artists who embody the disintegration of life in all its glorious disarray: Davis perfected his
and sensually amorphous art and personalities of Cocteau and Davis, LePage is the perfect extension of Jocelyn’s current focus. Recent economic downturns may make this production seem a formidable act of impossible wizardry to some, and a breath of fresh, fleeting air to others. Nevertheless, LePage’s fin de siècle masterwork will most certainly punctuate Canada’s timeworn addiction to never quite grasping its own identity in times of great international mayhem. Like the central character in Needles and Opium, we’ve been suspended between two worlds that must openly embrace multiculturalism. With its intricate balance of word and full-blown theatricality, the upcoming production of Needles and Opium promises to be a spectacular re-invention. LePage created the original as a one-man tour-de-force where he played all the characters. In the latest version he will direct two actors within a theatrical environment filled with a form of grand technical wizardry that has become LePage’s trademark aesthetic principle throughout his career. Jocelyn describes LePage’s technical prowess as a central guiding force, saying that Lepage “is always trying to invent the perfect technologies that best reflect the emotional core of the story that he is telling. It is a magic trick that is the symbolic core and how this is best materialized onstage.” Jocelyn adds that Lepage consistently imagines “a huge technical sophistication that doesn’t exist yet.” It is then left up to a team of gifted artists and technicians to assist Lepage within
Marc Labrèche in Needles and Opium
“All life, all beauty results from being broken down” —Jean Cocteau his mammoth collaborative vision. Jocelyn says that, with Needles and Opium, Lepage “swoops down with the same technique of displacement and suspension that he has used in other works as he perfects the machinery that reveals what we can do in the air.” Having opened last month in Quebec City, Needles and Opium has already garnered praise for its spectacular technical properties. The Charlebois (Canada’s online performing arts magazine) called the production “mind-blowing and mind-boggling,” the reviewer adding, “Once again director Robert Lepage fills us with wonder with his hypnotic multimedia projections. We are transported in literal and figurative terms between Paris and New York… between lost loves and addictions… the rotating stage takes us deep into the characters’ hearts, minds and even the absences they are surviving.”
Needles and Opium runs from November 22 to December 1 at the Bluma Appel Theatre. 27 Front St E. For tickets, call 416.368.3110 or visit canadianstage.com. intorontomag.com
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Nicola Frank Vachon
a fortuitous act of coincidental cul-
own take on a vigorous collaborative approach, so crucial to great jazz, as he allowed musicians to use intuition as a primary guide; while Cocteau’s art passionately embraced many forms, from novels to films, plays, painting and sculpture. For Canadian Stage artistic director Matthew Jocelyn, Needles and Opium represents the apotheosis of his vision for the company, a chance to reflect the work of Canadian artists and Canadian themes in collaborative works. With Lepage’s work in mind, Jocelyn speaks of coming to Canadian Stage as a director interested in re-shaping the company mandate, feeling the need to include more great Canadian performing artists who have, historically, not found a secure home on Canadian soil. The uneasy tension that continues to exist between English-speaking Canada and French Canada appears to play a part for Jocelyn as he attempts to attract artists who have, time and again, proven themselves outside the confines of English Canadian artistic circles. Jocelyn speaks carefully and respectfully of these issues and attributes them to a variety of sources ranging from decreased arts funding to a lack of theatres that possess the technical infrastructure and audience capacity for the kind of spectacle LePage has premiered internationally throughout his career. Under Jocelyn’s guidance, a fine repertoire of international theatre has found a resting place at Canadian Stage, and Needles and Opium promises to be a spectacular addition. As a queer artist taking on a variety of diverse topics, ranging from an intense interrogation of French Canadian Catholicism in his film Le Confessional (1995) to the current remount of the sexually
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23/10/2013 3:15:51 PM