Review: (Montreal) Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

(photo credit: Marie Eve Kingsley)

A Brel-liant spectacle
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living at Mainline theatre
by Sarah Deshaies

In 1952, recently married with a newborn, Jacques Brel began writing songs and performing in the cabarets of Brussels. Within a few years, his act was deemed the shining example of chanson français. 

Brel was a prolific artist, with 13 studio albums and several acting roles under his belt over the course of 20 years. His songs, highly theatrical and emotional, have been covered by everybody from Céline Dion to Leonard Cohen to Bowie to Nirvana. 

We move from spotlight performances of aching love songs like Fanette to fun, animated romps like Girls and Dogs, where men crudely compare man’s best friend to the ladies.

In 1968, a pair of Americans, Mort Shulman and Eric Blau, culled 25 of his lyrical gems, most translated into English, for a musical revue. And so Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was born off-Broadway in Greenwich Village. It was a smash hit for over four years, and has been rebirthed just about everywhere.

Speed up to 2013, 35 years after Brel physically left this earth, and his spirit is alive and well and hiding out in Mainline Theatre’s black box space in the show’s bilingual Montreal premiere.

In Your Face Entertainment takes the show, dusts it off and places it in the hands of four talented, emotive singers. It takes two acts to whip through 25 of Brel’s classics, with quotes from the man himself interspersed between musical vignettes.

Our requisite two-women, two-men team is Alisha Ruiss, Serge Turcotte, Martin Provost and co-director Nadia Verrucci. They all have strong, admirable voices, good timing and a live band playing polished, clean music to back them up. 

We move from spotlight performances of aching love songs like Fanette to fun, animated romps like Girls and Dogs, where men crudely compare man’s best friend to the ladies. Carousel is a harmony-happy mimic’s rendition of an outing to the circus. Bachelor’s Dance features Provost staging and re-arranging the ladies like giant prop dolls as he invents the perfect wife. I preferred the elegant, lively staging of the group pieces over the solos, but that could be a matter of taste. 

A nice addition would have been an explainer on Brel’s legacy in the program, something to situate us in his work and explain why Brel, why now. 

@sarahdeshaies

But, the talented, slight Verucci and her co-director Jacqueline van de Geer have created a cohesive romp with creative staging. 

If you’re not a fan of Brel, this may not be your tasse de thé, but it’s an excellent lyrical trip into one master songbook, and a must-see for any amateur de chanson français. 

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is at Mainline Theatre until March 24. 
Runs 1h45 with intermission.