The December Man: No Simple Tale of Tragedy

At my francophone junior high in Calgary, school administrators taught us to lock our classroom door, turn off the lights and hide behind our desks to avoid becoming victims of a tragedy like the one that took place at the École Polytechnique in 1989.

Twenty years later, the words Montreal Massacre recall that dreadful December day when Marc Lepine entered the school in Montreal and killed fourteen women, citing “anti-feminism” as his reason for committing such an atrocity. It is difficult, to say the least, to take on such a loaded subject in any type of performance. Directors, writers and producers easily run the risk of being seen as opportunists digging up a cheap reaction from their audience and heaps of publicity from tackling the issue. In the film industry, it’s a guaranteed Oscar. It takes skill, artistic excellence and tact to broach such a high profile tragedy and not turn it into a melodramatic cry-fest that will leave your audience feeling used. Thankfully, "Green Thumb":http://www.greenthumb.bc.ca/ Theatre's production of The December Man does no such thing. Instead, the narrative begins at the end, taking the audience through the lives of the Fournier family, beginning May 1992 and ending December 1989. Jean Émile Fournier (Charlie Gallant) is a survivor of the Montreal Massacre, and he and his parents, Benoît (Ron Lea) and Kathleen (Bridget O’Sullivan) Fournier are left to cope with the impact the event has on their lives. It must be all that television I’ve been watching lately, but a certain part of me craved a simpler story I could easily slip into. The actors are all so convincing and one is quickly drawn in to the play, and overall there are some incredibly moving yet unsentimental moments. I wasn’t the only one in the audience discreetly sniffing away. But The December Man is not a simple story about a tragic event. There are no heroes, there is no happy ending. Instead of being a straightforward story about a horrific act, the play uses the Montreal Massacre as a powerful backdrop to examine more complex issues of loss, remorse and heroism. This is the story of a family desperately trying to overcome an insurmountable tragedy that has taken over their lives. By taking us backwards through the story, the playwright allows the audience to closely examine the behaviour of the parents in particular, without necessarily reproaching their actions. For instance, while the parents seem strangely wise at the beginning of the play (I would explain why it’s strange, but don’t want to spoil it for you readers who have not seen it yet), we later hear them say cringe-worthy advice like “Just get over it” and “Maybe you need a girlfriend” while the young Jean struggles to cope with being a survivor who was unable to help his classmates. Fortunately for the sake of the plot, however, the parents aren’t painted out to be mean-spirited. Far from being one-dimensional characters, they are no more irksome than most parents – they just want what’s best for their son. What The December Man successfully manages to show us is that most families are simply not equipped to deal with tragedies like these, and suffer on for years despite being lucky to have survived the ordeal in the first place. Playwright Colleen Murphy also adds another level of complexity to her play by centering the plot on a male survivor. Because the Montreal Massacre is such a bastion of the feminist movement, it was interesting to see the subject taken from a different perspective. Murphy tackles the gender issue with tact. She avoids male appropriation of the story by making it clear that Jean is grieving not only at his ineptitude in heroism, but because of the loss of the women whose ghosts follow him as he goes about his day.

Overall, my only qualm with for Green Thumb’s production of The December Man is the fact that the characters, francophone Montrealers, speak to each other with a French accent, a pet peeve of mine. It’s a suspension of disbelief thing for me – if they’re all non-native English speakers, why are they all speaking English to each other? But even so, the actors were so comfortable with the accents, so convincing with their Osties and Tabarnacs that they had me in pretty close.

Lest we forget, the women who lost their lives on December 6, 1989 were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. The December Man (L’homme de décembre) by Colleen Murphy. Starring Charlie Gallant, Ron Lea and Bridget O’Sullivan. Runs until December 7 at Performance Works.