A CELEBRATION OF CÉLINE
Cabaret show toasts singer’s impact
Tranna Wintour and Thomas Leblanc are kind of obsessed with Céline Dion.
So they thought it was a natural to do a comic cabaret show that celebrates — and skewers — notre Céline nationale.
“It’s really a sort of cultural excavation and exploration,” said Wintour. “It’s kind of this academic approach but doing it in a way that’s entertaining and funny and very pop. But going deeper. You can go see a Céline tribute show or a Mariah (Carey) tribute show. You can see drag queens performing the songs of these people and that’s really fun. But it doesn’t really say anything about the cultural significance of these artists. That’s what we care about. We’re fascinated by the relationship between these figures and their audience, the way that they’ve shaped us and inspired us.”
“What we set up to was to queer Céline,” added Leblanc. “It was to take the songs and ask different performers to create a queer version of what they believe the song could be.”
Like many other divas, Dion has a strong following in the gay community.
“There’s that unique relationship between these divas and a queer audience,” said Wintour. “Céline and Mariah and Britney and Madonna, they always get asked in interviews about their relationship with their gay audiences and they can never really answer it. And maybe we can’t really answer it either, but it’s definitely a relationship that we explore. It’s different than a straight guy just worshipping the Beatles.”
The original version of the show, Sainte Céline: A Dion Cabaret, premièred at the Wiggle Room on St-Laurent Blvd. in April 2016. It was an immediate sensation and they reprised it the following summer with a soldout run at Zoofest. Now they’ve revamped and rejigged it to create what they consider to be a whole new show, titled Sainte Céline: A New, New Day, which plays the Wiggle Room Thursday, Friday and April 5. It is timed to coincide with Dion’s 50th birthday, which is this Friday.
Wintour and Leblanc, who are both standup comics and cabaret artists, appear in the show, which stars drag queen Crystal Slippers as the title character. They’ve also done a couple of other cabaret shows together, including Sweet Mariah: A Carey Christmas and Crazy Sexy ’90s.
Montrealers Wintour and Leblanc, who describe themselves as “old millennials,” grew up in a world coloured by Dion, but they came away with very different takes on the diva from Charlemagne. Leblanc loves her. Wintour hates her.
“I never knew a world without her,” said Leblanc.
“I feel like I’ve never known a world without her either, but I feel like she was forced upon me,” said Wintour. “This was not someone I sought out. I remember seeing Madonna doing Evita, on Entertainment Tonight, and I was just automatically drawn to her. But Céline was never that for me. I really feel she has been forced on us. Canadian and Quebec media have taken our faces and shoved them into Céline. Like, I’d be perfectly fine not knowing who Céline is. I’m not fascinated by her. But I’m fascinated by the relationship she has with the culture and the way that people look at her and get something real out of someone that I think is just basically a Hallmark card. So I’m drawn to these questions.”
Leblanc first got into Céline as a joke, but then something happened. “I’m a recovered hipster,” said Leblanc. “For me it was ironic at first, especially during the worst years, which for me was between 2000 and 2007. Bad hair, bad looks, bad music, bad everything. It wasn’t even working commercially that well. 1 fille & 4 types. One Heart — that’s bad Florida pop. I got into her wanting to piss off Montreal hipsters. Then I got trapped into actually getting into it.”
Wintour is just mystified by Dion fans.
“When I do encounter someone our age who loves her unironically, my automatic response is: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ” Wintour said.
Other performers in the show include singer-songwriter Odile Myrtil and Léolo, who will be performing Dion songs. There will also be monologues and stand-up routines.
“We never want anything we do to be one-note,” said Wintour. “We take care of the irony and the subversion. In every show we do, we want these pure heartfelt moments. At our shows, from the first Sainte Céline to the Mariah show to our Crazy Sexy ’90s show, there’s this real cosmic, magic energy in the room, and it’s so pure. People really get into it.”