Les Fridolinades
- Written by Gratien Gélinas
- Adapted and directed by Perry Schneiderman
- Starring Michel Séguin
- A co-production of Théâtre francais de Toronto and Théâtre de la Catapulte
- At the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs in Toronto
If you don't know the slingshot-slinging, straight-shooting Fridolin, you should. This 73-year-old sketch-comedy adolescent is as much a part of our theatrical heritage as Gratien Gélinas’s later dramatic characters Tit-Coq or Bousille.
Gélinas, Quebec's ur-playwright, first created Fridolin for a radio program called Le Carrousel de la gaieté in 1937; by the following year, Gélinas was incarnating him live on stage in a revue called Les Fridolinades, which became an annual tradition for almost a decade.
Fridolin – clad in a street urchin cap, suspenders, and the bleu-blanc-rouge of his beloved Canadiens – was the star of one of the first Canadian colour talkies, 1942’s La Dame aux camélias, la vraie; he was such a beloved character by the end of the war that the Canadian government enlisted him to sell Victory Bonds in 1945.
In Les Fridolinades, currently playing at Théâtre francais de Toronto (TfT), then at Ottawa's Théâtre de la Catapulte in March, director Perry Schneiderman has collected and adapted nine satirical monologues and scenes from the original revues featuring Fridolin and his friends.
While Les Fridolinades get revived fairly frequently in Quebec, here’s a rare opportunity for English-speaking Canadians to acquaint themselves with them thanks to the surtitles employed by the TfT.
Truth be told, many of the sketches, which I saw in their final preview, are about as funny as you’d expect topical comedy from seven decades ago to be. And, in the case of one bit involving shaking a baby, less so.
Nevertheless, they are not unentertaining and arerich in historical interest. It helps that Schneiderman has primarily selected sketches that centre around characters in dire financial straits, a situation not altogether irrelevant today.
In one scene, a middle-aged man fiddles with his transistor radio so he can listen in on the next day’s stock market report; the technology may have changed – and the Montreal Stock Exchange is not what it used to be – but it’s an enduringly appealing fantasy.
While his mother is off working in a munitions factory, Fridolin (Michel Séguin) is left to mend his own socks and wash his own underwear – while wearing a towel, because he’s down to his last pair. He tries to reach Mackenzie King with his own plan to end the Second World War – bomb Germany with oranges and Scotch until they become our friends – but doesn’t succeed until he asks the operator to put him through in English.
In one brilliantly satirical sketch, as two women fritter away the week’s shopping money on bingo in the local church, they discuss what a blessing it is that the government is shutting down the gaming houses. When they’re down to their final cents, they put a picture of Brother André under their bingo cards to elicit a miracle; that should work even better today now that he's been properly canonized.
In terms of theatrical foreshadowing, these two characters of Gélinas deliver an ode to bingo that seems a precursor of the one that would later appear in Michel Tremblay's ground-breaking 1968 play Les Belles-Soeurs. The language they speak, too, is the joual that Tremblay would later employ to controversial effect. On the whole, this 10-minute sketch makes Tremblay seem less revolutionary than evolutionary – as most playwrights we think of as revolutionary actually are when you look at them and their times up close.
In the cast of five, Lina Blais and Jocelyne Zucco show the best comedic chops. As Fridolin, Séguin could stand to be less cuddly. There’s something of the amusement-park mascot about him; he even greets us as we come into the theatre. It contributes to an overall impression of a production where the nostalgia more often than not waters down the satire.
Les Fridolinades continues through Nov. 7.
