About the Play:

Bonjour, là, bonjour (English-language version of Bonjour, là, bonjour) is a full-length drama by Michel Tremblay. A young man returns from Europe to confront his stifling Québécois family, the kinds of love they offer him and the kinds of love he needs from them. He's also longing to reconcile with his emotionally distant father. Along the way, he gains the courage to follow his heart and to pursue a love that is both tender and forbidden.

Bonjour, là, bonjour is a story of self-actualization, of a young man asserting himself amidst the maelstrom of his family's dysfunction. After a three month soul-searching sojourn in Paris, Serge returns home to the whining, nagging, defeated voices of his hypochondriacal aunts, his three chronically dissatisfied older sisters and his deaf father, Gabriel. Serge, however, has reached a crucial decision: that he and Nicole, his youngest sister, should live their incestuous relationship openly. In an unexpected moment of reconciliation, Serge is able to tell his father how much he loves him and suggests that Gabriel come live with him and Nicole, leaving hypocrisy and bitterness behind. Inspired by musical structures, the play interweaves the family's voices in duos, trios and other vocal combinations. Michel Tremblay considers this to the best of his plays, "In Bonjour, là, Bonjour, I apprehended the most of what I wanted to do in the theatre – to take out everything that is not strictly necessary."

Bonjour, là, bonjour had its English-language premiere in 1975 by Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. The play enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres, and is regularly performed in college theatre productions. This substantially revised translation by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco updates their original English translation.

Cast: 6 female, 2 male

What people say:

"…theatre does not often touch the heart the way this modest masterpiece succeeds in doing." — The Globe and Mail

"…a rewarding, disturbing evening, cleverly displaying the case history of one of drama’s stranger families." — The New York Post

"This is a close family of uncomfortable, even dangerous, relationships. Tremblay makes their crises simultaneously ordinary, universal (sex, class and language all make themselves felt) and shattering on the scale of Greek tragedy. His dialogue is scalpel-sharp, setting up painful conflicts quickly and often with pungent humour." — Now (Toronto)

About the Playwright:

Michel Tremblay has been one of Québec's most prominent playwrights since the end of the 1960s. One of the most produced and the most prominent playwrights in the history of Canadian theatre, he has received countless prestigious honours and accolades. His dramatic, literary and autobiographical works, originally written in French, have long enjoyed remarkable international popularity and translations of his plays have received huge success worldwide.