The Great Canadian Theatre Company held their opening night for a new one-woman show called Trudeau Stories, on Jan. 12.
Brooke Johnson told the story of her relationship with the late Pierre Trudeau in a captivating way that brought her experience to the audience.
Every seat in the theatre seemed full, and the 400 people kept their eyes on the simple set: an orange-patterned square painted on the floor, a light green armchair, and a brown box beside it.
Throughout the show, Johnson picked up journals and letters sent between her and Trudeau from the brown box to help narrate the story. These minimal props added authenticity to the story she told, and made her personal relationship with Trudeau not only hers, but ours.
Brooke Johnson met Trudeau when she was a student in college and an aspiring actress. They danced together, and after that a friendship began. Johnson shot down any means of a romantic relationship at the start, since he was about 30 years older than her at the time, but she still describes their relationship as a “romance.”
She told of their shared love of poetry and theatre, and she captured the senior Trudeau’s personality well when she played him. She showed his kind, witty, and child-like personality by telling the audience how they skated down the streets of old Montreal in their boots, and how patient he was with college students at a bar they went to.
She showed the audience her younger, energetic, talkative self and how she interacted with the sometimes shy Trudeau. She told the audience how they stayed in contact for years, and focused more on the personal side of Trudeau that the public did not get to know, as well as the political side.
Trudeau was shown as a person in this play, and whether you liked Trudeau or not, this play made you laugh at his jokes, tear up at the sad parts, and feel the nostalgia Johnson has for her old friend.
Throughout the play, there is always a sense that maybe there is more to the story that she isn’t telling us, and that maybe the pair shared some private moments she chose not to discuss, and instead chose to leave it up to the imagination of the audience.
Johnson made the story entirely about her and Trudeau, leaving it unclear if her friends knew about her friendship with him, or if the press ever painted them as a couple. Although it would be interesting to know these things, it might’ve taken away from the magic of the show that was only about the two of them and the characters Johnson played in her theatre school.
The entire show was beautifully done, and the story was told so passionately and truthfully that it was hard to think for a second she was making it up.
Even if there were doubts in the audience’s minds, the end of the play erased them all. Johnson held onto voicemails that Trudeau had left her, and she played them at the end of the show, and then walked off stage without a word.
– Photo is provided.
