For a good while now, the duo of golden women has been busy revisiting Claude Fournier’s erotic comedy, written in 1970 for the cinema, then adapted four years ago for the theater by Catherine Léger.
There have been pandemic postponements, two series of sold-out performances at La Licorne, and now this tour across Quebec, which until February will give the work yet another breath of fresh air.
And at any time, since the beginning of the adventure, there will have been events in the media “stratosphere” to confirm its relevance. Whether it is the broadcast of a documentary on masculinist discourse, the adoption of a distressing bill among our neighbors to the south or any other form of setback for women’s rights.
The play also stars actor Steve Laplante. (Suzane O`Neill/Théâtre La Licorne)
“That’s what’s crazy. We’ve been at this for four years, and each time, we say how relevant it is at the moment. There’s always something in the social atmosphere that’s about that. It’s still relevant today, and it’s been 54 years,” underlines Isabelle Brouillette.
After all, she continues, the play, like the film, addresses central issues in our society. Including “emancipation, the quest for freedom, the desire to escape from the shackles”. But also the couple. Which almost inevitably becomes a breeding ground for boredom, with the passage of time, and which sometimes sees certain crises appear. Passing or existential.
The neighbors protagonists of the play Two women in gold seem to lean more towards the second option. They who, respectively on sick leave and on maternity leave, will trade the void left by their absent spouses for the fullness of freedom.
The one that is acquired through conquests. In the din of a broken monotony. At the turn of a sexuality finally liberated, to be experienced to the fullest.
It has something “very confronting” for the spectators, say the actresses, who still take great pleasure in throwing this proposition at them, evening after evening.
“It’s confronting because we’re talking about monogamy, couples who no longer make love, couples who stay together even if they’re no longer happy, a guy who cheats on his wife when she’s all alone at home with the baby. You don’t want to be in their situation. But, at some point, you see that women are going to explode. And they explode,” explains Isabelle Brouillette.
Then it’s very pleasant to play this explosion on stage, notes Sophie Desmarais. “We’re having a blast. We manage to create rhythms, atmospheres. We’ve played it so much now that it’s time to go. For me, this is the first time that I have played the same character so much. It comes with a form of relaxation, we reinvent ourselves a little, we provoke each other.”
This is an important detail, she continues, after some 75 performances. Especially in comedy. We must stay “awake” and not fall into “the trap”.
What helps, certainly, is the text by Catherine Léger, who was able to add her own colors to the original work of Claude Fournier, at the same time as a nice touch of modernity – social networks and the #MoiAussi Movement at the same time. ‘support.
It gives “punchy, astonishing dialogues”, situations which confront us in our “human paradoxes”, and an intact “comic mechanism”. Which goes beyond summer theater and which pushes many to say to the duo, at the end of the evening: “I have never laughed like that in the theater”.
Still to this day, the two actresses are surprised by the scale of this success, as well as the “aura” of the work, still intact. Even 50 years later. Even with a different version, carried by a team which nevertheless kept a reasonable distance from the 1970 film.
“They are not the same characters. There was no weight of the past on us. When I came across the text, I was dazzled by the rhythm of Catherine’s comedy. Its acuity, lucidity. That’s what interested me. That said, it was not a foregone conclusion,” puts Sophie Desmarais in context.
The play is now in some 75 performances. (Suzane O`Neill/Théâtre La Licorne)
“It is one of the greatest successes of all time in cinema in Quebec. And even if the room is really different, and we quickly got away from it, we have to admit that it attracts a lot of people. We see that Two women in gold continues to have its own aura,” says Isabelle Brouillette.
Also starring Steve Laplante, Mathieu Quesnel and Léa Roy, the play directed by Philippe Lambert will be presented at the Salle Pierrette-Gaudreault in Jonquière this Tuesday evening, at the Salle Michel-Côté in Alma on Wednesday, then at the Salle Maria-Chapdelaine from Dolbeau-Mistassini on Thursday.
The troupe will end the year with stops in Quebec (November 24), Laval (November 29), Trois-Rivières (November 30), Drummondville (December 3) and Montreal (December 8). Before taking back the collar in 2025 with a final stretch which will notably pass through Gatineau (January 24 and 25) and Montreal (February 19 to 23).
If it will then end its theatrical life, the work Two women in gold will almost immediately start another one, with a screen adaptation in the summer of 2025. A film in which Isabelle Brouillette and Sophie Desmarais would have liked to play, in order to see the project through to the end, but which will instead feature Karine Gonthier-Hyndman and Laurence Leboeuf.
