Review: (Montreal) 2011 Revue et corrigée

À Corriger

The annual event at Rideau Vert raises cultural question

by Nanette Soucy

I jumped at the chance to check out 2011 Revue et corrigée at Théatre du Rideau Vert as an opportunity to explore the mysterious world of Montréal’s “French side” while not feeling completely out of the loop, having been raised on a steady diet of Québecois television and pop music in New Brunswick. 

...my friend Philippe leaned into me after the laborious first few scenes and asked if I really understood the sort of culture I was getting myself into.

An annual tradition at Rideau Vert, Revue et corrigée retells the years’ salient points with irreverence and relish. The six actors and their eight writers and collaborators create and embody a wide variety of local, national and federal characters;  Pauline Marois, Sonia Benezra and Stephen Harper are more real than life.

Greeted by portraits of the Queen and Quebecor logos splashed in lights across the walls, my friend Philippe leaned into me after the laborious first few scenes and asked if I really understood the sort of culture I was getting myself into.  I nodded and shook my head in the way that implied “sort of”. The show truly began, as I anticipated, with a fantastic series of imitations by Benoit Paquette who embodied a series of stand-up comedians with such smooth precision that it didn’t even occur to me until later that I only recognized his excellent, yet completely un-costumed channeling of Jean-Marc-Parent, since I was so busy falling over in my chair laughing at the brilliant and often physical punch lines. 

Does it make it okay, though, to go from minstrelsy, to making fun of everybody, including ourselves?


The show’s high points are its use of vaudeville, that include an homage to dearly departed Jack Layton’s optimistic smile to the tune of Puttin’ on the Ritz by France Parent as well as her performance as Ruth-Ellen Brosseau, the ventriloquist’s dummy on the knee of Martin Héroux’s Thomas Mulcair.  The show lost me completely when it devolved into minstrelsy with Héroux’s characterization of Oprah Winfrey.

When he re-appeared in a later scene, still in black face, alongside a variety of other caricatures, including the Beer-Helmeted Nordiques fan and the white dreadlocked Occupy activist dancing at the street party that apparently was la Place du Peuple, I realized the Quebecor logos weren’t part of the joke. Does it make it okay, though, to go from minstrelsy, to making fun of everybody, including ourselves?  Arguably, it might have done so had it maintained the vintage Vaudevillian vibe of other numbers, but it did not.

In Quebec, our tendency to think this kind of behaviour is ok is really not funny.


2011 has been a year of many stranger-than-fiction stories in Montreal and in Canada. What’s most interesting about 2011 Revue et corrigée is not necessarily the stories it decides to re-tell, but the ones it doesn’t. A wise comedian once explained to me, on the topic of taboo subjects in humour, that laughter is fundamentally an expression of shared pain. 2011 was full of unfunny moments that, to paraphrase Beaumarchais’ Figaro, which artistic director Denise Filiatrault chose to quote in her program note, we must hurry and laugh about, for fear of having to cry about.

I occasionally find myself in situations where I am reminded that we tend to surround ourselves with people and content that echo our points of view, validate our experiences, and reinforce our understanding.  I continue to be shocked in 2011, in Montreal, there are stories such as the students of HEC who decided to “honour” Hussein Bolt by chanting “Ya Mon” in black face, and disappointed that when we have a place to laugh and share the pain that these incidents cause, we instead choose to reinforce them. I would have loved to find a way to laugh about that story. Instead, I was asked to laugh at a man in a bad wig and make up with big boobs pretending to be Oprah Winfrey in a completely unnecessary scene about the canonization of Celine Dion. In Quebec, our tendency to think this kind of behaviour is ok is really not funny. Can’t we use humour to stop that pain?

2011 Revue et corrigée continues at the Rideau Vert