{"id":123504,"date":"2026-04-20T12:30:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=123504"},"modified":"2026-04-20T12:30:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:30:58","slug":"scrutiny-nervous-hunters-bonnes-bonnes-turns-jean-genet-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2026\/04\/20\/scrutiny-nervous-hunters-bonnes-bonnes-turns-jean-genet-head\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Nervous Hunter\u2019s Bonnes Bonnes Turns Jean Genet On Its Head"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scene
Scene from Nervous Hunter’s production of Bonnes Bonnes, presented by Factory Theatre and Th\u00e9\u00e2tre fran\u00e7ais de Toronto (Photo: Natalia Dkogosz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nervous Hunter production presented by Factory Theatre and Th\u00e9\u00e2tre fran\u00e7ais de Toronto: Bonnes Bonnes. Written by Tamara Nguyen and Sophie Gee, directed by Sophie Gee, Director, with Sophie Gee, Performer (Sophie); Meilie Ng, Performer (Meilie), Video Performer (Claire); Wai Yin Kwok, Performer (Wai Yin); Charo Foo Tai Wei, Video Performer (Solange); Holly Gauthier-Frankel, Voice performer (News Reporter, English). April 17, 2026 Studio Theatre at Factory Theatre, continues April 22 to 26 in French; tickets here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The risk of creating under the influence of a genius is being subsumed by it.<\/p>\n

For the most part, Nervous Hunter Production\u2019s Bonnes Bonnes, written by Tamara Nguyen<\/strong> and Sophie Gee<\/strong> and presented by Factory Theatre and Th\u00e9\u00e2tre fran\u00e7ais de Toronto, avoids this trap.<\/p>\n

The Play & Production<\/h3>\n

As soon as you enter the Studio Theatre, your nose is greeted by the scent of incense.<\/p>\n

On stage a TV streams CCTV \u2014 China\u2019s national television broadcaster \u2014 and music from a variety of East Asian languages and popular genres fills the space. The only senses the creators seem to have omitted are touch and taste, but they evoke the ambiance of an East Asian living space, where a porcelain teapot isn\u2019t out of place (set and prop design by Maryanna Chan<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Bonnes Bonnes begins with three East Asian women coming together to cook chili oil. There\u2019s Wai Yin (Wai Yin Kwok<\/strong>), a Hong Kongese worker who arrived in Canada later in life, and Meilie Ng (Meilie Ng<\/strong>), a modern, second-generation woman who is not fluent in Mandarin.<\/p>\n

The most interesting figure is the host: Sophie (co-writer and director Sophie Gee<\/strong>), who is eager to practice this tradition and to share her adaptation of Jean Genet\u2019s The Maids with them.<\/p>\n

Having formed an assembly line \u2014 Meilie on the chillis, Wai Yin the garlic, and Sophie the shallots \u2014 they watch the film on a laptop screen, the image of which is projected for the audience on a screen behind them. Rather than chronologically, the play thrusts us into Genet\u2019s world in media res, where Claire (also played by Ng) \u2014 masquerading as Madame \u2014 and Solange (Charo Foo Tai Wei<\/strong>) are caught in the shape-shifting dynamic of their power plays.<\/p>\n

At one point, multiple layers of spectatorship emerged: the TV broadcast, the projected film and the audience watching the women watching themselves. This doubling extends to depictions of labour, in the kitchen and the theatre, which is further amplified by synchronized interpretative dance sequences that depict the monotonous life of factory workers.<\/p>\n

When Solange says \u201cI love you,\u201d a pause \u2014 the first of many \u2014 provides an opportunity for the women to discuss and interpret the scene from their distinct perspectives. Meilie has never \u201cfelt Asian enough\u201d, Wai Yin recalls the pervasiveness of aspiring to white ways of being, and Sophie insists her engagement with Genet is more appropriative than one of kowtowing reverence.<\/p>\n

\"Scene
Scene from Nervous Hunter’s production of Bonnes Bonnes, presented by Factory Theatre and Th\u00e9\u00e2tre fran\u00e7ais de Toronto (Photo: Svetla Atanasova<\/span>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Theatre and Race<\/h3>\n

These scenes of annotation \u2014 touching on smelly food, Crazy Rich Asians and growing up with affluent white peers \u2014 feel dated upon arrival. I wondered if they might give way to sharper reversals, as in Genet\u2019s play; for the most part, it does not. Where the bulk of the subversion should take hold, these conversations follow along well-trodden paths, where the most vicious insult that can be hurled at one another is: \u201cYou\u2019re practically white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonnes Bonnes recalls a persistent issue in theatre\u2019s engagement with race \u2014 a tendency to find comfort in binary thinking. Even in works by East Asian creators that gesture towards nuance, the antipode is always white. And while no single play can encompass every experience \u2014 no race is monolithic, the immediate rebuttal to this critique goes \u2014 settling on this framework narrows the scope of its inquiries. If racialized creators seek nuance, they must acknowledge racial relations extend beyond this black box of a world.<\/p>\n

Progress might only be when whiteness is not a work\u2019s primary referent.<\/p>\n

That the play, originally written in French and produced by Th\u00e9\u00e2tre fran\u00e7ais de Toronto, was created in Montreal makes sense: its diluted dialogues would appeal to a white audience who may be unaccustomed to Asian culture and customs \u2014 or Michelle Yeoh\u2019s brilliance \u2014 but is well-versed and attracted by its proximity to Genet.<\/p>\n

In a talk back after the show, Gee explained one of their intentions with the chili oil was to fill in these \u201cwhite spaces\u201d with Asian scents, to create something the audience couldn\u2019t consume, a choice which I respect and felt was earned.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n

Formally and sensorially, Bonnes Bonnes is formidable, as when the screen playing the film gets larger and larger through Amelia Scott\u2019s projection design, lighting designer Nine Desbaillet\u2019s drowning the room in bright red, and sound designer Christine ML Lee\u2019s converging to create a resounding atmosphere.<\/p>\n

As Solange and Claire trash the Madame\u2019s home, yearning for a world where China takes over the world \u2014 where the Yuan, WeChat and Mandarin reign supreme \u2014 the energy in the room shifted, the play having tapped into The Maids\u2019 furtive psychic poison.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the play, in a monologue where Sophie confronts how her self-perception has been warped by the white world, we finally witness the anticipated subversion, where the radical, insurrectionary impulse of Genet and bleed, blend and blur into theirs, the way that the fragrance, flavour and colour of chilis becomes part of the oil to create an entirely altered substance.<\/p>\n

Presented for its first time in English, followed by a French-language run with subtitles a week later, Bonnes Bonnes \u2014 unassumingly assured, positively wicked \u2014 ends with a desire to recognize oneself when one looks in the mirror.<\/p>\n

An impossible task, but not difficult to serve.<\/p>\n

By Nirris Nagendrarajah<\/a> for Ludwig-Van.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Nervous Hunter’s Bonnes Bonnes \u2014 unassumingly assured, positively wicked \u2014 ends with a desire to recognize oneself when one looks in the mirror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42533,52,62,63],"tags":[1229,42818,28527],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/04\/Copy-of-REVIEW-2026-04-20T122611.551.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-w80","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123504"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123509,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123504\/revisions\/123509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123504"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=123504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}