La Maison Suspendue

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

The years 1991 and 1992 have been rich years for the established
Tremblay oeuvre: productions of Marie-Lou and (any number of) Les
Belles-Soeurs have been mounted across Canada (including the
Scots-dialect presentation slated for the public of Montréal). The
publication in English of La Maison Suspendue is welcome—not only
because it has been hailed as his most satisfying piece since those
famous sisters-in-law stood and sang their hymne national from the
stage, but also because the play brings together three sets of familiar
Tremblay characters in a kind of memory album, which gives their
interrelated history while developing them yet further. The album
encompasses three generations of characters plus an invisible cat
bearing the resonant name of “Duplessis.”

It says much about Tremblay’s pervasive influence since his arrival
on the scene as an enfant terrible of joual that one feels quite
comfortable saying that he has created an album of popular memories—in
spite of the fact that his characters would often be considered
marginal. An interesting coziness with the language and thoughts will
immediately strike the reader and audience. In collaborating recently
with the producers of a Yiddish production of Les Belles-Soeurs,
Tremblay noted that Jewish and French life in Montréal have many things
in common and that he is glad a production of his most famous play will
help to bridge the perceived gap between them. In La Maison Suspendue,
the musings of La Grosse Femme will certainly strike a chord of
familiarity akin to the popular wisdom of characters in the tales of
Shalom Aleichem.

As in Bonjour lа, bonjour, the dialogue of the latest play is finely
interlocked, like themes in an orchestral piece that are taken up,
repeated, and varied by each instrument. These instruments are very
familiar to those who have followed the Tremblay oeuvre: even in this
pastoral setting he allows a glimpse of the gay wit of La Duchesse de
Langeais, for example.

Van Burek seems more at home with this latest translation, occasionally
leaving whole phrases in French. Is it too much to hope that more
Canadians will comprehend or be willing to take the step of listening in
our other language of choice? It is fascinating to think that perhaps
eventually we may end up with a “bilingual” script of Tremblay’s
that would capture the general Canadian interest in the aggressive way
that Fennario’s Balconville did a dozen years ago.

Tremblay has breathed life into a whole society in creating his coterie
of characters from Duhamel and the Rue Fabre. The interrelationships are
never more poignant and significant than across the generations in La
Maison Suspendue. In addition, he seems to bring into painfully sharp
focus the inevitable confrontation between the straight, harshly
judgmental world of Albertine and the gay, self-mocking one of Йdouard.
Tremblay’s gift may be described in these words about Йdouard (La
Duchesse), uttered with enchantment by La Grosse Femme: “Stories in
books almost never happen here. . . . With Йdouard it’s like he
really and truly lived those things.” With writing like this, we need
not fear—with another character, Josaphat—that “there’ll be no
room . . . for la poésie!” La Maison Suspendue won the 1990 Floyd S.
Chalmers Canadian Play Award.

The editors of La Maison Suspendue needed to take a little more care in
assembling the script: a skipped word and a couple of transposed letters
appear in the text, but more seriously, a confused cast listing at the
front (French cast, September 1990, and English, November 1990) smacks
of having let a word processor do its thing with columns.