The Cherry Orchard

Albertine in Five Times

Albertine at 30 is sitting on the veranda of her mother’s house at Duhamel. Albertine at 40 is rocking on the balcony of the house on la rue Fabre in Montreal. Albertine at 50 is leaning on the counter of the restaurant in parc Lafontaine. Albertine at 60 is walking around her bed (in the house at la rue Fabre). And Albertine at 70 has just arrived at a home for the elderly.

This is how playwright Michel Tremblay introduces us to five women in Albertine in Five Times. Five women, who are really one woman – Albertine – at five different stages of her life. But Tremblay has placed them all together so they can talk to each other – possible only through the magic of theatre. And while they are all the same woman, they feel like different women as well. They all review the events from their life together and remind each other of past pains, loves and losses. Madeleine, their sister, is there to hear it all, to hear about how this woman’s spirit has suffered, struggled, thrived and survived seventy years of life. 

As they ’meet’ each other, we see what different women they really seem to be. And we learn how life has made each of them the woman they are. Albertine at 70 is shocked to remember that she ever thought as Albertine at 30 does, who speaks poetically about the countryside and the setting sun. But Albertine at 40 has grown hard and has no patience for them. Albertine at 50 has learned about the joys of rebellion and is doing only what she wants but Albertine at 60 sees her as a betrayer to her family. Albertine at  70 has seen it all and she’s grateful to be alive. Just because they are the same woman, doesn’t mean they feel the same way about life, marriage, their children, their mother – every age brings a different perspective:

Albertine at 30: Don’t judge me. You’ve forgotten how hard it is.

Albertine at 70: Mind you ... there’s no point in asking people to change ... When you’re young you think you’re right ... when you get older you realize you were wrong ... what’s the point of it all? We should have the right to a second life ... but we’re so badly made ... I doubt we’d do any better.

Michel Tremblay first introduced audiences to one of his greatest loves, the iconic character Albertine, in 1966. Albertine en Cinq Temps, was written in 1984 and she appears again and again in his plays and novels and became a Québécois phenomenon, the quintessential tragic heroine who was never quite able to rise above her lot in life. The English translation of the play premiered at the Tarragon Theatre in 1986, bringing the Albertine saga to Anglophone audiences in what Robert Crew of the Toronto Star called "in a word, awesome". The play won the 1986 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award and has been produced around the world in English, Danish, Hindi, Japanese, Spanish and German.

Playwright Michel Tremblay is one of Canada’s leading playwrights and his first major work, 1968’s Les Belles-soeurs, changed the face of Québecois culture with the use of joual, the hybrid English-French spoken in various communities in his native Montreal, which provided audiences access to representation of themselves onstage. In 1987, Les Belles-soeurs was named by Paris’ LIRE Magazine as one of fifty plays that should be included in the home library of anyone who is interested in the history of theatre. 

We’re pleased to be presenting a new translation by Linda Gaboriau, who won the Governor General’s Award for her translation of Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again and was a finalist for the award with her translation of his Impromptu on Nuns’ Island and also translated Tremblay’s plays Past Perfect and Assorted Candies.

Directed by Micheline Chevrier, the five Albertines will be played by Patricia Hamilton (who also starred in the original English production of the play), Wendy Thatcher, Mary Haney, Jenny L. Wright and Marla McLean with Nicolá Correia-Damude as Madeleine.