Lilies; Or, The Revival of a Romantic Drama: a love triangle, tragedy, revenge and two dynamic queens
11 May 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Jeremy Mimnagh

Two sassy queens with grand delusions upstage both a love triangle and a revenge plot in Lilies; Or, The Revival of a Romantic Drama. Michel Marc Bouchard's play within a play is layered with an extra thematic level by setting the play in a prison populated, as so many sadly are, predominantly by Indigenous men. The meta-theatricality is further extended by creating a prison chapel within the theatrical queer church that is Buddies, as the climax of their 40th season. The play within the play within the play is a homoerotic version of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Arrows as a symbol of both religious fervour, homosexual desire, and the Indigenous past, all coalesce into a potent if puzzlingly unexplored pointed metaphor.

Lilies is a melodrama and the language, at least in this translation by Linda Gaboriau, is deliberately poetic. The emotions are heightened by the setting, and the scenes where the inmates/conscripted actors threaten the visiting bishop have a dark Genet-esque menace. The bishop is there at the invitation of an old friend Simon Doucet who has been an inmate for 35 years. The play within the play is Doucet's revenge for the bishop's part in the explosion of the love triangle and Doucet's incarceration..

If it sounds confusing, initially it is. Especially when the peripheral characters make their grand entrances and proceed to take over. Ryan G Hinds (MacArthur Park Suite, Bent) as Mademoiselle Lydie-Ann de Rozier and Troy Emery Twigg as the Countess Marie-Laure de Tilly, are grande dames in both bearing and their own minds. Their secrets unravel at the same time as the love triangle, the artifice they have created is all part of the meta-theatricality. Hinds and Twigg chew the scenery with a delightful fragility, always conscious they are acting until the passion takes over and the madness takes hold. 

Unfortunately for the love triangle of Waawaate Fobister (The Crackwalker), Tsholo Khalema (Box 4901) and Indrit Kasapi (Hello Again, House Guests), the queens walk away with the show. During rehearsals for the play within the play within the play, Fobister is directed by the onstage director/priest illustrating the trickiness of Bouchard's concept. How do inmates acting differ from actors acting? What is the reality? From there the love triangle takes a naturalistic approach that, particularly Fobister's James Dean-esque internalized mumbling and slouch, just can't compete.

As if the two drag artistes were not enough, Mark Cassius and Walter Borden (Harlem Duet, Gerontophilia) are both powerful presences with stentorious voices that can make poetry ring. Cassius as the aforementioned director/priest, wraps his tones around a tricky piece of writing that lays the framework for the themes Bouchard sets out. And makes it riveting to hear. Borden begins at full-tilt, a volcanic eruption of anger and pain, that shakes the theatre but leaves him with nowhere to go. Alexander Chapman as the bishop can at least start small and snide before building towards his big shattering moment.

Joseph Zita is the comic relief and also a constant reminder that we are watching a play within a play. Cassius disappears into the chorus and Borden and Chapman are mostly sidelined to watch, again as a constant reminder of the ambiguity of theatre/artifice and the horrid reality of the prison and the apparent futility of love. This Lilies begins with the sound of prison doors slamming shut, locking us in. Unfortunately the claustrophobic effect is undone by the cavernous set that fills the space with space. We are always watching from a distance, insulated from the passions exploding before us.

Then the lines between theatre and Doucet's reality disappear, we are inside his mind and Lilies races to a climax. The layers and ideas never quite gel - but then Doucet's revenge is deliberately incomplete so that is metaphorically apt - but there is a melodramatic catharsis built in. Just never an intellectual resolution which is a shame in an uneven production that is bursting with ideas and potential. But the process of grappling with the themes is a noble one and frequently fascinating. And when the queens take over, entertaining and illuminating.