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| Richard Monette, Richard Donat. |
Note: Several entries beginning with the letter H were inadvertently overlooked when their turn came to be posted. They are now being posted, albeit belatedly.
HOSANNA [Drama/Canadian/Homosexuality/Romance/Transvestitism/Two-Characters]
A: Michael Tremblay; TR: John Van Burek and Bill Glassco; D: Bill Glassco; S/C:
John Ferguson; L: Vladimir Svetlovsky; P: Norman Kean i/a/w John C. Goodwin and
Tarragon Theatre, Toronto; T: Bijou Theatre (OB); 10/14/74-11/3/74 (24)
Hosanna was
originally written in a French-Canadian patois and performed as such in
Toronto. Its English translation opened in this production a year later and
then toured to New York. Canadian author Michael Tremblay, an ardent Quebec
separatist, refused to allow any Quebec production of his plays to be done in English
(Toronto is in Ontario). His separatist concerns lay at the heart of this
promising but ultimately unsuccessful work.
The plot concerns the unhappy love affair between Hosanna
(Richard Monette), a waspish, witty, middle-aged Montreal hairdresser and drag
queen, and his younger, leather-loving, albeit passive, boyfriend, Cuirette
(Richard Donat). Hosanna’s dream is to make himself over so that he resembles
Elizabeth Taylor as she appeared in Cleopatra.
However, his attempt to pass as his idol at a party has been a miserable
failure.
In the course of the play, Hosanna doffs his Taylor makeup
and clothes. The reasons for his downfall are disclosed in a long second act
monologue addressed directly to the audience following Cuirette’s departure on
his motorcycle. He reveals that he was the butt of a cruel joke, for when he
arrived at the party he found everyone else dressed in the same getup. Worse,
Cuirette was in on the gag. In the end, the lovers are reunited in a naked
bedroom embrace.
Although not universally discussed, the issue of the play’s
symbolism was touched on by several reviewers. Clive Barnes noted that Tremblay
was equating the drag queen who wants to be what he is not to Quebec, which can
only survive if it recognizes its individuality and stops pretending to an identity
(as part of Canada) it doesn’t possess. Or, as Walter Kerr explained it, Hosanna
“may just be French Canada refusing to play passive female to British Canada’s
assertive maleness any longer.”
Barnes considered the author skillful, but his story “too
simplistic,” the ending “sentimental,” and the characters “not completely
convincing.” Still, there was “real wit and insight,” he admitted. John Simon
assessed the work as not without “dignity, but it does lack density and complexity.”
To John Beaufort, “it proved monotonous and depressing—sometimes vitriolic,
always forlorn,” while to Martin Gottfried it was “truthful and . . .
ultimately noble.” All the critics, however, agreed that the performances were
excellent.
