Login / RegisterDespite its strengths, Plan B sounds pretty familiar
By Michael Healey. Directed by Bill Devine. A Sea Theatre production at Presentation House on Friday, May 14. Continues until May 29
If you’ve been riveted by Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe’s cross-country sovereignty tour, then you stand a chance of enjoying Michael Healey’s Plan B. But if you’re like me, and you’re sick to death of discussing what feels like a dead issue, then Plan B will mostly annoy you, despite the strengths in Sea Theatre’s production.
In Healey’s script, which won a Dora Mavor Moore award for best new play in 2002, 53 percent of Quebec’s population has voted in favour of independence, so four politicians are meeting in Hull to negotiate the terms of separation. A senator named Michael and his sidekick, Colin, make up the Canadian side. Mathieu is the premier of Quebec and Lise is his minister of intergovernmental affairs.
Lise’s job title becomes literal when she starts boinking Michael. In the play’s relentless central metaphor, Lise becomes emblematic of Quebec: feminine, demanding, and driven by emotion rather than reason. This characterization is insulting to both women and Quebeckers, of course. And Michael supposedly embodies English Canada; he loves that flirty little French province but has a hard time seducing her, partly because he doesn’t know what he wants.
This metaphor is reductive and less than revealing; mostly, it just reinforces familiar stereotypes. And it doesn’t always make much sense. At a crucial point, Michael, who is married, turns away from Lise because he’s received a phone call from his female toddler. Who the hell is that supposed to be? PEI?
In the play’s central comic trope, characters say what they really feel and admit what they’re really doing: early on, Michael suggests to his fellow negotiators that they finalize the leak schedule; in private, Michael and Colin discuss when Michael should act outraged; and Lise admits to Mathieu, in French, that she could swallow Michael whole. This device is funny sometimes—especially when Michael forgets to take his Ritalin and falls into the grip of his attention deficit disorder—but it’s also repetitive.
Fortunately, the actors are better than their script. Adam Henderson handles Michael’s overwritten text—and the character’s many turns—with aplomb. Howard Siegel fills Colin’s expletive-laden dialogue with genuine fury. Jacques Lalonde brings a sweet deadpan to Mathieu. And France Perras makes a smart and sexy Lise.
But who really wants to listen to this play? We’ve heard it all before.
I loved the search for identity in this play - essential Canadian navel-gazing - but it never takes itself tooooo seriously, just seriously enough to make you think about a few of our kooky national qualities. But there the tree was full of yummy fruit! Adam Henderson trying to make sense through the morasse of his Ritulin withdrawl was nearly worth the price of admission alone. Howard Siegel's characher arc was also amazing and unpredictable. France Perras made another big step in her conquest of Vancouver. Jacques Lalonde (The Crazy Frenchman) played it straight. None of this have I ever seen before. Play of the year for me.
I was quite surprised at some of the stuff Colin was saying. I think maybe he should take a break from reviews and write a really great play since he is clearly so much smarter than other playwrights.
I do have to take issue with some of his strange thoughts about our play. There is a sexy, funny love story between a man and a woman but that in no ways implies that Quebec is merely feminine in nature. Rocket Richard is very emblematic of Quebec and last time I checked he was pretty masculine. Oh yeah...and there's the other Quebecois character in the play...the one driven by reason...I guess Colin forgot about him...wondered maybe if he represented Nunavut, maybe?...And as for nothing new in this play, I have been working on it for over a month now and still am enlightened by its words and ideas.(And I grew up in Montreal during the first Referendum)
I guess Colin is just that much smarter than me (and, apparently this award winning playwright and the people who gave him the award for best production). I am really looking forward to Colin's next play because its going to be so smart with lots of new ideas. I just hope it is as funny as this one.
Perhaps my reaction will feel less dismissive if I give it a more personal context. Through the two referenda, I was sympathetic to Québec’s aspirations to sovereignty. But when Jacques Parizeau blamed the defeat of the second referendum on the so-called ethnic vote, he exposed the racism that lurks beneath the surface of the separatist movement. The separatist argument that French Canadians are uniquely oppressed became much less persuasive to me and more clearly self-serving. The pose of victimization that has been such a goldmine for separatists lost its hold on me.
Justifiably, playwright Michael Healey sends up that oppressed posture. And he sends up English Canadian dithering as well. I didn’t mean to imply that Healey or Sea Theatre was pursuing a secessionist agenda.
I think it’s unlikely that Québec is going to separate—in a recent poll, 58% of Quebeckers said they would vote against such a move. And the constant threat of departure has become tedious—at least to me. If Québec does leave, I will be very sorry, but I won’t mourn the loss of Michele Tremblay’s plays. They won’t disappear. They’ll still be part of world literature and I’ll still enjoy them.
For me, Plan B adds no significant insight to the debate, although I’m glad it does for you, Jacques. I respect your position: as an actor in the show, you’re much closer to the script than I am. And Jacques, I take your point that the separatist side is embodied by a man (your character) as well as a woman in this script. Still, the female Québec character is more central, and the supposed irrationality of the separatist position is presented in female form. (Yes, all of the characters are eccentric; I'm talking about the whimsical way this character changes her mind.) As I see it, this formulation is sexist.
As I said, there’s successful humour in this play. It won a major award in Ontario, which I acknowledged. And I respect the artists involved: the actors are particularly strong. But this is clearly a play about issues; it’s a political satire. And, for me, those issues started to go stale a long time ago.
Colin Thomas
Yes of course we must all fight against racism, every second of every day if need be. The play does not support Parizeau or that kind of logic (who resigned under pressure the next day because of his remarks). You are correct in assuming that I did not choose the play because, under the guise of it all, Healey is writing a separatist agenda sympathizing with the Quebec sovereigntists. It is a political satire, it certainly mirrors the Quebec/English relationship. Also personal relationships. In fact any two groups or individuals in a tug of war from a political or personal perspective The satire arrives from that mixture of recognition with the element of surprise. Yes it is about issues, but human issues concerning the dominating/surrendering motifs of will and desire which are concurrent with the political thinking.
Michel Tremblay. You have rightfully put him on the world stage, he exists with the crí¨me of the crop. I can live with that as much as I can live with Cocteau and Genet from France. Brecht and Wedekind from Germany. Shakespeare and Hare, England. Chekov and Gogol etc. and so on.
My experience is this. When I was 18 or 19 I saw a Tremblay here at the Arts Club on Seymour Street. I had not yet seen Theatre so powerful. Very shortly afterward ward I left for Toronto on the journey to find work. There I saw Tremblay productions of Bonjour la Bonjour, Montreal smoked meat and Hosanna with Richard Monet to name a few. My life has been trying to come to grips with the life of the Theatre since. Quite simply - that sealed the deal. I left for Drama Centre and after my education I was asked to stay in England. Both the Royal Manchester Exchange and the Glasgow Citizens offered me acting positions. I didn't want to stay because I wanted to be back in Canada with the writers like Michel Tremblay and that whole crew. Of course I was naive. But that was the dream. If Tremblay were in some Country called Quebec somewhere down south or something - well yeah, I would respect his writing (like all the greats) but the inspiration of what that writer did for me as a young artistic,with my personal growth, and - yes lets go whole hog, on a spiritual level - I simply don't have with those other writers of genius. It is that inexplicable need of artist and country and the peerage therein. I would beg my sisters and brothers to stay because I believe they would share with the next generation of young artists (and the many to come) this source of genius.
Irrationality, well I still don't get it, I mean I really don't see any of these characters as being rational. In fact most of the body of the Marx Brothers movies are more rational than Healey’s politicians. So the fact that you see one as irrational/whimsical and the other three as stable confuses me still.
Very long winded this...but an important note - in the many years of reviews (good and bad) I have not written a critic about their opinion because I know you have a job to do. We wouldn't invite you if we didn't want you to be there. However, because the internet now allows a response I just followed that impulse and did what I don't normally do. Respond. I just felt you totally dismissed the evening’s work, with comparisons completely manipulative to justify your points. As a result some very good acting work (in a production that many find extremely satisfactory) got thrown to the wolves. Yes there were a couple of quick asides mentioning the actors- but apparently that does not seem as important to you as some cryptic angst you have with the racist Parizeau. And all these thoughts of "dead issues" and "over" and "we have heard it all before" are to me, dismissive of our French Canadian sisters and brothers. And please, stop using we when talking your angst, revert to I. With respect, you do not speak for me from an Anglo perspective or someone from the West Coast. Please don’t group me into that dislike.
Sincerely
Bill