20 years after its first production, Canadian visionary Robert Lepage revisits his breakout show, Needles and Opium, creating a new production that will receive its English-language premiere with Canadian Stage from November 22 to December 1 at the Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front St. E). Starring Marc Labrèche reprising his leading role, with Wellesley Robertson III joining him on stage bringing a second character to life, the production features new scenography with original images combined through highly visual staging that is as much magic as it is theatre. "Needles and Opium was one of the first productions to set Robert Lepage on the world scene with his unparalleled capacity to use the most ingenious of theatrical technologies to deepen the emotional voyage played out on stage," said Matthew Jocelyn, artistic and general director, Canadian Stage. "Taking advantage of more sophisticated projection and technological savoir-faire, Lepage has chosen this piece above all others as the work he wants to revisit for today's audiences. After the success of 2010's The Andersen Project, we couldn't be more excited to bring Lepage and Ex Machina back to Canadian Stage."
The iconic play, written and directed by Lepage, is tale of displacement, passionate love and loss, drug addiction, and the creative drive that sets American jazz musician MiLes Davis during his stay in Paris in 1949 side by side with French poet Jean Cocteau as he travelled to America in the same year. Cocteau writes his Lettre aux Américains in which fascination and disenchantment intertwine; he has just discovered New York, where he presented his most recent feature film, L'Aigle à deux têtes. At the same time, Davis is visiting Paris for the first time, bringing bebop with him to the old continent. Forty years later, at the Hotel La Louisiane in Paris, a lonely Québécois tries in vain to forget his former lover. His emotional torments echo Cocteau's dependence on opium and Davis' on heroin through a spectacular withdrawal experience presented as a hypnotic series of fictional vignettes. The fascinating, introspective show, which received rave reviews after its sold-out French-language debut in Quebec earlier this fall, uses technical wizardry to share a true emotional journey.
Photo by Nicola-Frank Vachon
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