As a cub reviewer in 1992, I was
entranced by Robert Lepage’s solo piece about Miles Davis and Jean
Cocteau, about creativity and dependency, about physical and
imaginative space. Lepage’s star has perhaps waned a little in the
interim, if only through increased familiarity with his imagistic,
often space-bending approach and the emergence of newer, more modish
non-naturalistic theatre-makers. The magic, however, remains nearly
half a lifetime on. From the opening image where the protagonist
appears at once to be wearing a
traje-de-luces,
an acupuncture map of the human body and one of those suits that
translate bodily movement for purposes of CGI, to the final moment when
he seems to merge with the cosmos itself, this 95-minute piece is
passionate about the need for us to embrace transcendence wherever we
can find it, even in pain and addiction.
The magic remains despite it now being neither a solo show nor
performed by Lepage himself. Marc Labrèche now plays “Robert”,
simultaneously weathering a painful break-up and a trying voice-over
gig, and also adopts a more fluting voice and a repertoire of fluid,
wave-like gestures as Cocteau reciting from his
Letter To The Americas. Davis,
originally more of a shadow than an onstage presence, is now portrayed
by acrobat and breakdancer Wellesley Robertson III, slipping between
the dimensions of the constantly shifting half-cube set as wall becomes
floor and vice versa, and miming the beaten silver notes of Miles’
trumpet which changed the topology of music just as Lepage and designer
Carl Fillion keep our perceptions and imagination in permanent motion.
Three intersecting walls, trapdoors which become windows or extrude
beds, an ever-changing series of projections, performers walking
Escher-like through the dimensions with the aid of flying harnesses or
through sheer gymnastic skill, and even the semi-taboo romance of
preparing, shooting and savouring the high of opium. It could no doubt
be argued that the glories portrayed are all escapist and/or vaporous,
but that’s the point: we need to move beyond the emotional and artistic
spaces we know. For the world we know has changed almost out of
recognition in the past quarter-century, but the ultraworlds of
Lepage’s work are as thrilling as ever.
Written for the Financial
Times.