Centaur Theatre caps 2014-15 season with triple-tiered smash "Triplex Nervosa"

The Centaur Theatre capped off its 2014-2015 season with a comedy that’s a triple-tiered smash.

“Triplex Nervosa” by Marianne Ackerman, tells a series of interwoven stories in the life of a triplex apartment complex in the increasingly trendy Mile End district of Montreal, in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. Tass Nazor is the landlord of the triplex in question, and has hired Rakie Ur, a Russian immigrant to be her new superintendant and enforcer to a hermit-like tenant who is delinquent with the rent. As if she doesn’t have enough problems, Tass has to deal with another tenant who plans to leave, but not until he sells his property in T.M.R. (which delays her plans to have his apartment entirely renovated), a young Westmount woman who is getting over a bad break-up and considers renting one of the apartments so she could convert it to an art studio, and a Chassidic rabbi who formerly owned the triplex, who is a questionable business negotiator and admits he could have gotten a better deal for Tass if she was a man (or was married).

When Max Fishbone (the hermit tenant) dies suddenly, Tass and Rakie worry that the police will think they played a part in his mysterious death, which could mean the end of Tass’ triplex ambitions.

This production works so well mainly because of the strong ensemble of local actors that make up the cast. It is so well-anchored by Holly Gauthier-Frankel as Tass, the harried, stressed out landlord, who plays the part with so much comic nervous energy as she copes with all the compounded aggravation she experiences that gives her a big triplex headache. Also, special shout outs go to scene-stealers Karl Graboshas as superintendant/enforcer Rakie Ur, and Cat Lemieux as Montreal Police Sergeant Tremblay, in which the scene where she questions Tass and Rakie after Max Fishbone’s death, is a fun piece of comic repartee which allows room for some well-placed ad-libbing (especially when it involves a crumbling slice of pizza).

So whether you lived in a duplex, triplex or apartment building as a landlord, super or tenant and know all the foibles, pitfalls and aggravations of being one of the three, “Triplex Nervosa” offers an entertaining – albeit temporary – antidote to the stressful world of rental properties; it’s playing at the Centaur until May 17.