Review: Lavalléville

Last night Mike and I scored free tickets (courtesy of Véro, HEY, I can do accented characters through this website software now! Great!) to see the play she is in – Lavalléville.

Véro has been preparing for this for about six months so I was quite excited to see what they had come up with. Lavalléville is a play written by André Paiement
who is some big playwright from Sudbury who spearheaded some Northern Ontario theatre scene. Clearly I am not well versed in this subject matter so we could also ask Véro for a chat about why this guy was a big deal.

This play was deemed the ‘quintessential’ Northern-Ontario play…it takes place in Lavalléville where there is no real outside contact with the rest of the world so they dress a little strange, their mannerisms are a little odd and if they do get word from the outside of the town, they are either scared or in awe of it. For example, Véro’s character plans to leave Lavalléville to a place called Montreal, Canada where she has heard that women can get paid to sleep with men; all you have to do is wear short skirts and high boots. This is quite the revelation for all those that hear this.

The story really revolves around Diane’s (Véro’s character) wishes to leave the town and the hopes that a big-wig from Toronto, Canada will come and like what he sees in the town and invest in it (or buy it? I didn’t really catch the difference…).

This play was over the top hilarity. The characters are in caricature mode, meaning that this is not a serious play whatsoever. The outfits/costumes were quite out of the ordinary. Véro’s hair probably stood a foot off of her head. One gentleman dressed as Napoleon while another woman dressed like Madonna (circa 80s). The energy on the stage was incredible. It was such a energetic play…usually I’ve seen plays which are introspective and subdued…this one was like watching a full-out comedy ten feet in front of you.

Mike and I both thoroughly enjoyed the play. It was highly entertaining and it was great to see Véro (and all the others!) hard work pay off into a spectacular spectacle (please note my spectacular vernacular). Véro over-acted her part (which was planned) so she is quite the crazy person on stage. Plus we got to see her sing a solo number, dance a little around the stage and *gasp* kiss another guy. Mike nudged me during that part of the play. Heck, I knew it would happen and that’s what actors do…right? 😉

Go show some support to Véro and the others and see Lavalléville! Tickets are $12 each ($10 for students/seniors) and it’s playing Thursday, Friday and Saturday, each week until the final showing on April 19 (which I will be at). You can find more information here:

http://www.theatretremplin.com/