There was Denis Villeneuve's film, of course; this magnificent work from 2010 had greatly left its mark on people's minds. But now, after the big screen, Firesthe play by Wajdi Mouawad, returns to the stage with a magnificent show at Duceppe, between pain, love and self-discovery.
More than twenty years after its first creation, the tragic story of Nawal, mother of three children who experienced the horrors of war in “her country where it never rains”, resurfaces, this time in a joint production by Elkahna and Ines Talbi.
In the vast hall of the Place-des-Arts, crowded for the occasion, here is the bloody story of this woman who fled her small village, after having had to give up her first child for adoption, and whose wanderings will push her two others descendants, the twins Simon and Jeanne, to go back in history many years later, following the death of their mother.
Back to basics, therefore, for this family saga spanning two continents and several decades. In a particularly refined setting, where the detachable pieces of what looks like a mound act as seats, mounds of earth, desks and other physical elements sometimes looking like impassable obstacles, our characters alternate between present moment and returns back as sweet as bitter.
At the heart of a very solid cast, we find Sabrina Bégin Tejeda (Jeanne) and Neil Elias (Simon); the first is a professor of advanced mathematics, as Cartesian as it is possible to be, it seems. The second is an amateur boxer, angry, impulsive… Simon has never forgiven the silence in which his mother confined herself during the last five years of her life. A silence attributable to a truth more terrible than death, and which will burst in the faces of our protagonists towards the end of this marathon of more than two hours, without intermission.
But at the center of all this, at the center of all, we find a Dominique Pétin as imperial as she is erased, as majestic and magnificent as she can be injured and diminished. In the role of this young woman forced to abandon her first son, then of this same young woman full of hope, of this exile thrown onto the roads due to the war, of this mother who went through hell who will end up (almost) taking her secret to the grave, the actress is powerful, terrifying, magnificent, even completely human.
Faced with lines ranging from the simplest to the most complex, from the lightest to the most direct, the actress takes us into a storm of emotions and reflections on the hope of a better life, on the burden of traditions, on the weight of fear, on this mixture of love and anger seemingly inextricable from being a parent… We often receive his declarations like so many blows dealt with force.
Yes, for anyone who has seen the film, or any other variation of this play which has already celebrated its first 20 candles, there will be no surprise, strictly speaking. But the fact remains that between the perhaps a little more “fixed” aspect of a work of the seventh art, and the more “living” side of theater, the experiences are certainly different. Especially since we are here, surrounded by hundreds of people, collectively experiencing this overflow of emotions, this overflow of love and pain offered by people whose guts have too often been ripped out…
It is also impossible to ignore the magnificent costumes of Sophie El-Assaad and Marika Porlier, each layer of which conceals a new form of meaning…
Masterful, this new interpretation ofFires is an opportunity, especially in the current context where Israel is spreading death and destruction in the Middle East, to question our relationship to love, war, death, peace, family… Vast program which will stay with us much longer than the two hours of the performance, it goes without saying. A must see, absolutely.
Firesby Wajdi Mouawad, directed by Elkahna and Ines Talbi, with Sabrina Bégin Tejedea, Denis Bernard, Ariane Castellanos, Neil Elias, Reda Guerinik, Dominique Pétin and Antoine Yared
Chez Duceppe until November 30
