Who needs irony when you have two Celine plays

[Céline's Blues]

THEATRE: CELINE SPEAKS AND SAVING CÉLINE

 

 

Who needs irony when you have two Celine plays

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE

 

September 1, 2007

 

Quebec's love-hate relationship with Celine Dion goes on and on. As a best-of-city poll in the Montreal Mirror earlier this summer confirmed, the pop diva is both a saint and a sinner over there. Readers placed her as the third Montrealer "closest to hell," one rung below Karla Homolka, and the eighth in line to sainthood, a list that features Leonard Cohen at No. 2 and William Shatner in third place.

 

The poll - which inexplicably also placed her at the top spot as Montreal's "most desirable woman" - is another example of the strong feelings that this pop diva has been eliciting at home and abroad for most of her 25 years in showbiz. Those who love her do so with a passion matched only by the one shown by her detractors. As her Las Vegas contract comes to an end and as a new English-language CD, Taking Chances, is scheduled for a November release (to be followed by a world tour), the Dion controversy is expected to rage on for a few more years.

 

What more could playwrights scouting for a galvanizing female character hope for? The little girl from Charlemagne, Que., has it all: from a fairytale rags-to-riches story to a marriage that screams Electra complex and a repertoire of love songs to meet Can-Con quotas from here to eternity.

 

Surprisingly enough, no Canadian playwright has tackled the thorny issue of Dion - until this summer when suddenly not one but two plays "featuring" her received their premieres in Toronto and Montreal. First off was Laura Landauer's one-woman-show Celine Speaks at the Toronto Fringe Festival, a gentle satire about "Celine's day-to-day life" that grew out of her popular impersonation act. The potentially more vicious murder-mystery Saving Céline by playwright Mark Watty just opened Thursday at Montreal's Mainline Theatre, starring the city's popular drag queen Mado (the alter ego of performer Luc Provost) as a psychologically disturbed Dion impersonator. While the two plays are very different in style and content, the points of departure for Landauer and Watty were identical: What is it about Dion that made her so iconic so fast? And is there a little bit of Celine in every one of us?

 

 

Print Edition - Section Front

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http://images.theglobeandmail.com/v5/images/icon/icon-digital-leaf-small-red.png "People have such strong feelings about someone who's pretty vanilla, really," says Watty, on the phone from Montreal. "That intrigued me as a writer ... Everybody thinks they can relate to her." Even drag queens and female impersonators in Quebec don't know what to make of Dion. Her fame and obscene fortune make her an obvious target for parody, but there's a distinctly anti-diva quality about her public persona that stymies the fiercest of drag artists. "The thing that makes her funny or irritates [drag acts] is that she's cheesy without knowing she's cheesy," explains Watty. In other words, Celine Dion (the woman, the singer, the perfume seller and Air Canada songbird) is largely an irony-free zone. In theatre, that's refreshingly original.

 

Landauer agrees. After years of watching her videos and TV interviews, she's come to the realization that, despite all the glitz of Las Vegas and the glamour of Hollywood, what you see is what you get: "At the beginning I thought she was too sincere. 'Is this real,' I used to ask myself?"

 

Both Watty and Landauer single out Dion's outburst on CNN's Larry King Live in the wake of the Katrina disaster as a definitive moment in the singer's cultural ascendancy in North America. In just under eight minutes, Dion established herself as French Canadian yet spoke of the United States as her "country"; lost her temper but ended the interview on a sung prayer; acknowledged her $1-million donation while trying to be discreet about it. It's the perfect storm of money, pop clichés and bi-cultural flag-waving that only Dion can muster.

 

TV appearances like these are dramatic gold for Landauer whose play borrows as much from the singer's conversations and autobiographical writing as it does from her songbook - hence the title Celine Speaks. "People used to say 'That's just crazy. Imagine if she said that.' Well, she did," she explains.

 

Landauer and Dion's millions of fans wouldn't want it any other way.

 

Source: The Globe And Mail

[thevoice]

loved the part of ""People have such strong feelings about someone who's pretty vanilla, really"

[KimboCosmo]

Wow, that's insane!

[Javier_Natalio]

Loved it, thanx.

[A New Day Has Come]

Thanks for the article it was pretty good.

[celinesounds]

thanks

[VinnyT.]

[neilg]

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That video scared me just a little

[Celinemaniac]

This video has nothing to do with Celine, obviously!

[Krys]

LMAO at the vid!

[Love,]

The only thing that bothered me are those tattoos!

[mirage]

get used of the tattoos...

 

she will have them for her new world rock tour... ;-)

 

(that pic of her in the paper.... where is that face from? looks like oscars? )

Edited September 3, 2007 at 07:25 AM by mirage

[Lulu]

Thanks for this.

Interesting.

 

[giglamoroso]

I saw the play "Saving Celine" in Montreal: very funny with a hilarious ending.

It's not harmless tough... I could see an international carreer for it . Bye!

[Bell]

Thanks for this.

Interesting.

 

 

Yes, interesting...

[RLAAMJR.]

All I can say is , Celine 's upcoming english album will sold more than 10 million copies, even if her singles won't really become great hits. For fact that Celine will be touring, will still boost her album sales.

 

 

 

Advance Congratulations Celine!