news | Wednesday August 5, 2015

Rave reviews for The Divine, now playing at the Shaw Festival

The National Post has called it “the most exciting new Canadian play in years” and Bouchard’s “best work.” The Globe and Mail insists that The Divine: A Play for Sarah Bernhardt justifies the existence of the Shaw Festival, the theatre festival for which it was commissioned.

The Divine, written by Michel Marc Bouchard and translated by Linda Gaboriau, runs until October 11, 2015, at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Don’t miss it!

“It’s [Bouchard’s] best work, and the most exciting new Canadian play in years. … Sex embraced or coerced, religion used or abused, exploitation industrial and institutional, theatre celebrated and satirized and satirizing itself: it’s a heady mix, and I wondered halfway through if the ingredients could be kept in balance. It turns out that they can. This is a play with an all-conquering narrative drive and an abundance of twists; there are no unabsorbing moments.”
National Post

“a wonderful wrestling match between art, religion and business … a moving and entertaining yarn drawn from our own history … a play that is constantly pulling the rug out from underneath itself – and yet somehow keeps landing on its feet with only a few wobbles, quickly righted … The Divine is a rebuttal to its own criticisms about theatre – and [a solid] justification of the Shaw Festival’s own existence…”
Globe and Mail

“Bouchard takes a real event in history – the visit of legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt to Québec City in 1905 – and uses it to cast some dazzling new light on the themes that this gifted author has pursued with passion for all of his career: the destruction of innocence, the inequalities in his native province’s social and religious systems, and the healing capability of theatre in the face of these ills. … Bouchard writes with power, using broad strokes of language (muscularly translated by Linda Gaboriau) … Virtually every scene in the play makes its points well and leaves you thinking afterwards.”
Toronto Star

“Bouchard writes with scathing temper and his play is both touching and frightening.”
Hamilton Spectator