Canada: QUEBEC: Laughter & Tears

Montreal’s Théátre du Gesu was sold out at every performance last week. The darling of the French Canadian theater, an impish comedian named Fridolin (real name: Gratien Gélinas) was on the stage in his new play, Tit-Coq.

Every year since 1937, 39-year-old Fridolin had written, backed, directed and starred in a revue called Fridolinons, a collection of skits, songs and dances. With it he had toured his native Quebec, drawn some 130,000 people a season, netted an annual profit of about $50,000. Tit-Cog was Fridolin’s first try at writing a full-length play.

Tit-Coq (Little Rooster) is a story about a French Canadian soldier who, as a product of a foundling home, is acutely conscious of his bastardy. Fridolin takes the title role. He is onstage three-quarters of the time, plying his audience for laughs with Chaplinesque pantomimes of Tit-Coq’s army life, playing for tears with sentimental references to his hero’s illegitimacy.

Tit-Cog has already become Fridolin’s biggest hit in his 11 years as an actor. Its run to date has passed the Fridolinons’ best (53 performances), seems certain to reach the loo-performance mark before it goes on the road in French Canada. Its success has also brought Manhattan’s Theatre Guild agents to Montreal with an offer of about $3,000 a week (on a percentage basis) for an English version for Broadway, with Fridolin, who speaks fluent English, in the lead.

Fridolin, who scored a hit in Eddie Dowling’s St. Lazare’s Pharmacy in Chicago in 1945, was in no rush. Weekly receipts at the Theatre du Gesu were $12,000, and nearly half of it was profit (before taxes) for Author-Producer-Director Fridolin. To earn that kind of money, he played only five shows a week, had plenty of time left to spend with his wife and six children. Neither the money nor the hours would be as good on Broadway.

Another reason for passing up Manhattan this year was Fridolin’s hope to try out an English version of his play in English Canada. If Torontonians, for example, liked Tit-Coq, Fridolin was certain that New Yorkers would also. Said he: “When art is right locally, it will be right internationally too.”