Centaur Theatre Company

with bated breath

Bryden MacDonald downplays nudity in With Bated Breath
And now it's time for the shocker of the Centaur Theatre season.
Ever since artistic director Roy Surette unveiled the poster with the full-frontal naked young man last spring as he announced Bryden MacDonald’s With Bated Breath would be the grand finale of the 2008-2009 season, people have been waiting with, well, bated breath to see whether it’s going to be theatre of the X-rated kind...
By Pat Donnelly, Gazette Culture Critic

In The Twink of an eye
"Montreal's Centaur Theatre celebrates its 40th anniversary with bated breath - and tons of male nudity! The last time I saw the world's most famous gay porn director Chi Chi LaRue was the night Chi Chi was actually barred from entering Montreal's famed male strip joint Campus."
By Richard Burnett, HOUR

"a sexy, sensual show with plenty of bravado, some nudity and a surreal, orgiastic ending which drew cheers on opening night."

"Mackay burns up the stage...Shulman is a wicked dynamo...these two performances alone are worth the price of admission, alone. Plus, Archambaudoin has the sass and the moves and Sutherland-Young’s as adorable as a Care Bear."
By Pat Donnelly, Gazette Culture Critic

Big city temptations
" ...there’s plenty of psychodrama at the Centaur in Bryden MacDonald’s With Bated Breath. Co-directed by the author and Centaur artistic director, Roy Surette, MacDonald digs deep into the private and obsessive lives of Cape Bretoners—and what happens to them in sinful Montreal.
It’s a tortured, Maritime Gothic story, centring on Willy (Michael Sutherland-Young), a troubled, extra-sensitive gay kid who splits Cape Breton for Montreal’s red light district and goes missing without a trace. He’s touched the lives of all the other characters, and his presence lingers uncomfortably.
As reality blurs with fantasy, Willy’s story is told and reinvented by his friend and protector Esta (Sarah C. Carlsen); Float (Éloi Archambaudoin), a jaded stripper who takes him under his wing in Montreal; Camilla (Felicia Shulman), a small-town gossip; Bernie (Neil Napier), a married and deeply closeted man; and his wife Ricotta (Danette Mackay), a fading party girl whose on-the-rocks relationship gets a further blow as they invite Willy into their home.
MacDonald shuffles the chronology of the story—directed with smooth, logical transitions—from rural front porch to sleazy gay strip joint to tableside gossip over a shared joint.
“We’re all so fragile ... you never know when it might just snap,” says Esta. Raw and profane, the uniformly solid cast expose nerves—and plenty of skin—as they are shaken by the boy’s departure.
It closes in a perfect circle as the opening scene (Where’s Willy?) is repeated at the end. A great device: showing the audience how its acquired knowledge has changed everything.
Tits, ass, pubic hair, boners, masturbation: the play’s got it all, at Centaur of all places, and about damn time. "
By Neil Boyce, MIRROR

" With Bated Breath est sans contredit une pièce à ne pas manquer."
SOUNDBEAT Magazine

April 21 - May 24, 2009

World Premiere

Centaur Theatre Company presents
With Bated Breath
By BRYDEN MacDONALD
Directed by BRYDEN MacDONALD & ROY SURETTE

STARRING
ÉLOI ARCHAMBAUDOIN
SARAH CARLSEN
DANETTE MACKAY
NEIL NAPIER
FELICIA SHULMAN
MICHAEL SUTHERLAND-YOUNG

Set and Costume Design by James Lavoie
Lighting Design by Spike Lyne
Sound Design by Peter Cerone
Stage Manager: Todd Bricker

From the author of Divinity Bash / Nine Lives, The Weekend Healer and Whale Riding Weather, With Bated Breath is the provocative tale of Willy, a troubled but charismatic gay kid who flees Cape Breton Island for Montreal with hopes of forgetting a newly broken heart. He finds momentary comfort with the denizens of the city’s red light district, but soon goes missing without a trace. Willy, in one way or another, has had a profound effect on the lives of the other characters. His presence lingers. As rumors fly, secrets explode, and reality blurs with fantasy, Willy is both remembered and reinvented. Imbued with equal measures of wit and warmth, MacDonald proves to be a master at merging the pedestrian with the highly theatrical.

"My plays are about journeys and rebirth – their endings bring new beginnings. They often shed light on those society has forgotten; those, who for one reason or another have found themselves trapped - and what happens when these people are set free.
In With Bated Breath, memory plays a prominent role: how time effects it, how it fractures and is often reinvented depending on the situation - and why is it that certain things stay with us with a blistering clarity, while other things simply slip away only to reveal themselves again later without warning.
One of my many guilty pleasures is country music, when it was really country music: the heightened heartache of Tammy Wynette and George Jones; Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, and my all time fav Dolly Parton. With Bated Breath could easily be subtitled "a hurtin’ song". The broken characters in this play, with their double lives and tarnished armor, who sometimes only have their sense of humor to keep them afloat, are my heroes."
Bryden MacDonald

"Sometimes shocking, often foul-mouthed and usually hilarious, Bryden MacDonald’s poetic characters are a dynamic combination of salty and sweet, of soft and hard, of light and dark. We might find them on the fringes of society or broken by circumstances, impoverished, indulgent, in flux, navigating towards their individual destinies like ships on a starless night. In With Bated Breath, Bryden’s latest and most prismatic play he artfully plays with time and space piecing together a story of heart-break that moves between rural Cape Breton and Montreal’s edgy strip clubs. He employs a kind of theatrical alchemy as the characters confront hidden aspects of their sexual identity and their deep yearning to find piece of mind. This motley crew may not be your idea of the perfect dinner guests but they certainly make for a bracing evening of theatre. Premiering a new work is always a bit of a roller coaster ride and working with Bryden, Michael Sutherland-Young and the wonderful, courageous Montreal actors and designers to bring this provocative and brave play to life has been a pleasure and hopefully you will agree, a bold end to the years’ diverse programming."
Roy Surette