Review of A Children’s Party | When the mirror shatters

David possesses the devil’s beauty and an unquenchable thirst to be admired. Nicolas is caring, ready to do anything to keep his family united. Together, they are the protagonists of Michel Marc Bouchard’s most recent play, a tragedy that is festive in name only.

Posted at 9:36 a.m.

For his return to the stages of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, the prolific playwright once again dips his pen into the themes that are dear to him: tormented beauty, the play of appearances and the secrets that inevitably end up coming to light.

Pour A children’s partyMichel Marc Bouchard set his story in an ordinary suburb, on a foggy day. Claire (delightful Sylvie Drapeau) agrees to host her grandson’s birthday party in her “vast home”. Among the guests are David and Nicolas (François Arnaud and Iannicko N’Doua), a same-sex parent couple with two girls aged 9 and 7.

Both men have a magnetic charisma; their daughters are gorgeous. But behind this perfect facade, the breaches multiply until they form a chasm that will swallow them all. This children’s party, we feel, will turn into a disaster.

PHOTO YVES RENAUD, PROVIDED BY TNM

François Arnaud is back on stage after 16 years of absence.

François Arnaud, absent from the theater stages for 16 years, plays David, a toxic narcissist around whom all the stars must gravitate. The actor who divides his life between Quebec and Los Angeles does very well with the difficult score written especially for him. Often alone on the immense TNM stage, he is sometimes intoxicated by vanity, sometimes pitiful by his desire to possess everything.

In the skin of Nicolas, Iannicko N’Doua plays the tender half of the tandem with great naturalness. When her soft voice cracks, it is to let the immensity of her pain burst forth. Of the two, it is by far the most touching.

PHOTO YVES RENAUD, PROVIDED BY TNM
Sylvie Drapeau, on the left, is exquisite in the role of Claire, a retired dentist and great collage lover.
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However, it is the divine Sylvie Drapeau who makes the biggest impression with her exquisite interpretation of Claire, a retired dentist who beats boredom by making collages. Narrator of the drama that is about to play out, she admits in the same breath her love of glue a little too much and her detestation of wet children “shivering like hooked trout”.

Michel Marc Bouchard wrote her lines that hit the mark as soon as she opens her mouth. In Claire’s clothes, Sylvie Drapeau embodies all our desires for perfection aligned like so many white teeth to explain what sometimes escapes us.

That those who loved The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up be informed: this new text by Bouchard is (much) cruder, more violent in its content. And the suspense which envelops the work is less skillfully carried out. The clues placed here and there by the playwright are less subtle and the finale is less surprising. Although no less touching.

When directing, Florent Siaud chose to multiply the video projections (signed Félix Fradet Faguy) on several screens which go up and down. These often blurry images recall the fog of this sad day, but also the confusion that inhabits the characters. They serve as a further backdrop to this rather intimate story, where the secondary characters are only present through their pre-recorded voices.

When this curtain of atmospheric projections rises to show the flatly banal daily life of the characters, the contrast is striking. David’s beauty does not shelter him from the vagaries of life. Because the reality is cruel: no matter how tall you are, there will always be dinner dishes to pick up and the mortgage to pay.

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