by AMY BARRATT

So, what's up with all the Irish plays in French at La Licorne? Martin McDonagh, Mark O'Rowe and now Hilary Fannin - the hip little theatre on a scuzzy strip of Papineau is having a prolonged love affair with the new wave of playwrights from the Emerald Isle.

Hours before the opening of her Doldrum Bay, I met with Fannin to discuss the collaboration with Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD), which is responsible for this former actress from Dublin being in Montreal for the third time in a year.

CEAD, a Quebec institution with a mandate to get Quebec plays produced in Europe and European plays produced here, had forged links with Dublin's Abbey Theatre.

"The Abbey sent a bucket of plays over," Fannin says, "and amazingly, Doldrum Bay was the one [CEAD] chose to be translated. On the heels of that, I made my first trip to Montreal for a translation residency." There, Fannin met actor-writer François Létourneau, who was to translate her play.

"He has made Doldrum Bay fit into the mouths of the actors here," Fannin says. She decided to return the favour by translating his play Cheech, ou, les hommes de Chrysler sont en ville, into Irish English (working from a literal translation provided by CEAD). She would "dearly love" to see it produced back home.

It seems that everyone involved in this cultural exchange agrees that Quebec and Ireland have a strong affinity. CEAD organized a round table last week to discuss why that is. The panellists, including Fannin, Létourneau, and Jean-Denis Leduc, artistic director of La Licorne's resident company, Théâtre de la manufacture, were in agreement on at least two major factors: they're both modest-sized nations with unique dialects, living in the shadow of a dominant culture, and they've both undergone very quick transitions from traditional Catholic to adamantly secular societies. While the change in Quebec took place over about 30 years, in Ireland it has all come about in the last 10.

"It's only in the last three years that you're able to divorce somebody," says Fannin, by way of example. Modern-day Dublin is a city of churches being turned into condos and shopping centres.

Francis, a character in Doldrum Bay, claims to be writing a novel about God and sex. Fannin had nothing so grand in mind, she says, when she began to write this play. "I was writing about relationships, about these two couples, and also about the death of my father." She didn't set out to write about the decline of the Catholic Church or the changing reality of Irish society; those things crept in of their own accord.

Plot descriptions tend to make Doldrum Bay sound kitchen-sinky, but in this production, at least, it is anything but. Many of the scenes are obviously taking place in houses and pubs, but the playing area is covered in sand, with props such as a grand piano and a half-buried toilet popping out. Dublin is of course a coastal city, and Doldrum Bay is a real, as well as a metaphorical beach.

All of the characters in the play are well drawn and well acted by a cast of six. I like especially that the three women are all so different and none is a stereotype (even the bimbo is no bimbo). Under Philippe Soldevila's direction, the piece is lousy with atmosphere, yet somehow the laughs are muffled - maybe by all that sand - and the sad parts are just bleak. Doldrums indeed.

Doldrum Bay, to Nov. 27 at La Licorne (4559 Papineau), 523-2246

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