THEATRE REVIEW: LA SAGOUINE
19 May'10

‘La Sagouine’ a treasure

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 5 out of 5

In 40 years, she has carved a niche in the Canadian psyche and on the Canadian stage, not so much by advancing the dreams of a forgotten people, as by giving life to their memories.

She is LA SAGOUINE, the 72-year-old Acadian washerwoman who lends, if not her name, at least her profession to a series of 16 monologues initially written by Antoine Maillet for radio back in the early ’70s, then transformed into a stage vehicle for the unique talents of the seemingly ageless and indefatigable Viola Léger.

Léger first brought the work to Toronto back in 1973, then earned a Dora for her performance when she returned to the Toronto stage in 1979. Now, in 2010, she’s back and proving, at age 80, that she has lost none of her ability to sweep an audience up in the palm of her hand and carry us to the New Brunswick shoreline, to the little town of Bouctouche, the small Acadian town where La Sagouine and her husband Gapi eke out a subsistence.

LA SAGOUINE had its English language opening Wednesday in the Berkeley Street Theatre, where it will run through May 29, to be followed by a run en français, from May 31 through June 5, in a joint production by Pleiades Theatre and Montreal’s Segal Centre, who will host the show next season.

For the stage, LA SAGOUINE’s original 16 monologues have been culled to only five, although, as the years have passed, Léger has retired some and added others. Indeed, for the Toronto run of the show, she’s performing one of those monologues for the first time for an English audience. Titled The War, it looks at the Second World War and the Great Depression from a most unusual angle.

But she begins on more familiar turf, settling in for a chat as she sips tea in one of the homes in which she labours. It’s an ideal way to introduce herself, and after she sketches in a few details of her long life, she indulges in a litany of health complaints — complaints she admits she should take to a doctor, for all that she really is more comfortable not knowing what’s wrong. We learn about her marriage, her children — the few who survived, the many she lost — and about the hard-scrabble life she’s lived, growing up Acadian in a part of the country little changed since her people made their way back to it after the expulsion of 1755.

As she moves through her tales, she not only gives us a chance to get acquainted but opens a window into the life of her people as well, painting a portrait of small-town life that manages at the same time to be both universal and site-specific. Anyone whose roots stretch back to a small town will find familiar echoes in Maillet’s monologues, for all that they harbour a distinct Acadian flavour as unique as the chewy, briny flavour of quahogs or the utter bliss of rapûre.

While the first act is a delight, the second, set in the home La Sagouine shares with her husband, is utterly riveting and deeply affecting, as Léger launches into the aforementioned monologue on war, following it up with a reflection not only on spring, but on how deeply a people’s roots can stretch into even the most inhospitable soil, like that around her home.

Beautifully and unobtrusively directed by John Van Burek, on a simple set created by Yannik Larivée and lit by Robert Thomson, LA SAGOUINE may have started out to give voice to the memory of a people — and it does that beautifully. But somewhere along the way, it has also become the living treasure of a nation — one that shouldn’t be missed.