Hosanna

David E. Kemp is head of the Drama Department at Queen’s University.

This is a new translation of Tremblay’s breathtakingly beautiful and
compassionate play, which first saw the light of day at Montreal’s
Théвtre de Quat’sous in 1973 and was performed at Toronto’s
Tarragon Theatre a year later. Van Burek and Glassco undertook the first
translation of Hosanna and this latest version is exhilarating, funny,
and, ultimately, very moving.

Tremblay was born in 1942 and raised in east-end Montreal, where this
play takes place. His first hit Les Belles-Soeurs was followed by a
string of further successes, including Bonjour lа, bonjour, Forever
Yours, Marie-Lou, The Impromptu of Outremont, and Albertine in Five
Times. Tremblay revolutionized Québécois theatre by introducing joual
to the stage, but his association with Glassco and the Tarragon Theatre
has made him as well known in English-speaking Canada as in his native
Québec.

If success in transvestism is achieved by outdoing one’s colleagues
in the field of social adroitness, then Hosanna has been a successful
transvestite. Originally from a small town in Québec, she (the pronoun
Tremblay uses) discovered her sexual preference early in life and
decided to move to Montréal, where she soon “got ahead in this town
by being a bitch.” Evidence of her success is that she has won the
heart of Cuirette, a biker, who at one time set the transvestite
community ablaze but who is now considered a little old and overweight.
The play involves a Halloween party with the theme of Famous Women in
History. Hosanna dresses up as her idol, Elizabeth Taylor. When she
makes her party entrance she is devastated to find not only that
everyone else has dressed up as Cleopatra, but that they all look better
than she does.

Hosanna is a superb play and this translation does it every justice.
Anglophone theatre owes a debt of gratitude to Glassco both for his
translation and for his championing of Tremblay, one of Canada’s
foremost playwrights.