When a theatre advises audiences that they will need a cold shower after seeing a new play, it’s sure to spark interest. When that theatre is the Segal Centre for Performing Arts, they may wonder if it’s a belated April Fools’ joke.
Not exactly, but April Fools is the title of the Segal’s next offering: a “steamy adult rock cabaret” restricted to those over age 18. The show is the translated and adapted iteration of a smash Israeli musical that premiered in 2018 at the Habima, the country’s national theatre, and performed hundreds of times around the country before the pandemic.
Created by and starring Keren Peles, a pop icon and songwriter, April Fools had Israelis atwitter over how much was autobiographical in this story about a married woman who risks a ‘perfect’ life—family, nice home, career—for an affair with a soon-to-be married man, a reserve army officer with his own demons.
Peles is not in the Segal production, which runs May 1-22, but is working closely on this English-language premiere with its director Moshe Kepten, Habima’s artistic director, who helped bring to stage the Hebrew original.
The Segal’s content advisory warns audiences the play deals frankly with marital infidelity and sexuality, including simulated orgasm. There is “strong language” and talk about drug use and mental health.
This version does not take place in Israel or refer to it. The story has been relocated to Los Angeles and the female lead’s illicit lover is a firefighter, set to Peles’s original songs with dance numbers and dazzling video effects.
The audience is not a passive observer. This is probably the first time that theatre patrons will be asked to turn on their cell phones, said Kepten.
In what proved to be a hit with tech-loving Israelis, an app is downloaded before the performance that allows the audience to view the heated texts between the two lovers. Besides adding a voyeuristic thrill, at a certain point, audience members may intervene and influence the plot.
The Segal’s hyping of the naughtiness is a bit misleading, according to Kepten, who says don’t expect the tawdry; this is a serious, artistic work.
“There is no nudity or anything explicit, nothing is gratuitous,” he said. “It is a universal situation that everyone can see themselves in. A woman breaks from societal expectations, has conflicted emotions and faces the consequences.”
Kepten hopes April Fools will eventually tour elsewhere in Canada or the United States.
He has been conscious of the need for cultural, as well as linguistic, translation. Perhaps Israelis are a little more shock-proof than people here. “This is a different culture, and I’m wondering how Montrealers will react.”
Executive and artistic director Lisa Rubin believes mature audiences want theatre that addresses real-life issues, but knows it is not for everyone.
April Fools’ Canadian cast is headlined by Eva Foote and Daniel Murphy, joined by ensemble characters with names like Libido and Morality and Confidence and Doubt. Twenty-four performances are scheduled in the main 300-seat theatre.
When the Segal gambled on a 2021-2022 subscription season after the previous season had to be scratched due to the pandemic, Rubin said it was taking some artistic risks as well to entice people back to live theatre.
She admits it’s not easy. “We have lost a ton of people. We don’t expect to bounce back immediately.”
A sixth COVID wave was officially declared in Quebec on March 30 and case numbers have only worsened since then. The province still plans to lift masking for indoor public spaces, the last remaining restriction, on April 30.
The Segal will nevertheless continue to require masks at all times, including when seated, said Rubin. Another measure was mandating triple vaccination for all cast and crew members.
Though unlikely, if there is another forced closure of performance venues, Rubin said the Segal will not move April Fools online. Digital theatre, in its experience, does not work, she said.
The Segal managed to present in-person, with limited capacity, the season’s first two plays: the one-man Every Brilliant Thing and Superdogs: The Musical before Omicron and yet another shutdown was imposed in late December.
The January show, Pandemish, featuring the comic duo YidLife Crisis, was switched to online only and February’s Black and Blue Matters was cancelled even though theatres could reopen at full capacity. Rubin explained that public health protocols made it too difficult to do justice to the development of this new musical about racism and police brutality, produced by the Black Theatre Workshop.
Black and Blue Matters will be mounted next season, which is to be unveiled in late May.
The final show this season, the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre’s The Sages of Chelm, is still on for June.
The April Fools team worked via videoconferencing for months before Kepten, Peles and some Israeli musicians came to Montreal for rehearsals, often at odd hours due to the time difference.
For Kepten, this was a small sacrifice after a devastating two years for the performing arts. “I will do anything it takes to keep theatre alive, and we all have to keep living now,” he said.
