by AMY BARRATT

Carole Fréchette is a Governor General's Award winner, as well as one of the most successful playwrights in Canada, but that wasn't always the case. She once had a desk job with the Canada Council, and tried to write on the side. But a moment came when she had to make the leap - quit her job and commit to her art full time. That decision reportedly was a big part of the inspiration for her play Les sept jours de Simon Labrosse. The play deals, in a quirky and charming way, with the insecurity of unemployment as well as the fear of rejection so familiar to artists.

As Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse, the play just made its Montreal English language debut here in a Montreal Young Company/Gravy Bath production running at the Monument-National. Unemployed but endowed with a prodigious imagination, the title character invents a new career for himself every day.

The production is noteworthy on several counts. Difficult as it is to fathom, this is the first English language production of any of Fréchette's plays in her home province. This play and others including Les quatre morts de Marie and La peau d'Élisa have been performed elsewhere in Canada and internationally. This English translation is by Alberta-based playwright John Murrell.

The production also marks the revival of the beleaguered Montreal Young Company. Founded in 1999 by the late Bill Glassco with Chris Abraham and Jane Needles, the company did a few lavish, critically acclaimed shows before running into financial difficulties. The company's reincarnation was set in motion by Glassco, who chose the play and was set to direct Simon Labrosse before his health took a turn for the worse last summer. Glassco passed the directing reins to his friend Michael Shamata and even managed to attend a read-through of this pet project - with the cast he had chosen - before his death last September.

Simon's friends Leo and Nathalie are played by two National Theatre School alumni; Paul Fauteux will be familiar to local audiences as an inaugural MYC member as well as from Chris Abraham's production of The Kabbalistic Psychoanalysis of Adam. R. Tzaddik. Carmen Grant recently performed the solo South African work The Syringa Tree at Neptune Theatre in Halifax. She was last seen in Montreal in Sarah Kane's Crave, a Temenos production. The title role belongs to Mike Hughes, a familiar face in Gravy Bath shows such as Ugly and Coriolanus, as well as an improv guy with Fringe favourite Uncalled For.

Fréchette was in the crowd on opening night.

Fun factoids

Simon Labrosse was first produced in French at La Licorne in 2000. That theatre is currently continuing its cultural exchange with Ireland with Tête première (original title: Crestfall), by Mark O'Rowe. (They produced his Howie the Rookie in 2002.)

What new play from last fall, produced by a middle-sized company and adored by this humble critic, has been picked up by the Centaur for its 2005–06 season? If you're one of the few not yet in on this worst-kept secret in the theatre community, all will be made clear when Gordon McCall announces next season's lineup on March 7.

Coincidentally, Tales From Ovid, the Centaur's remount of the 2004 National Theatre School production, begins previews March 8.

Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse, to March 12 at the Studio Theatre of Monument-National (1182 St-Laurent), Tues.–Sat., at 8:30 p.m. Sun., March 6, at 2 p.m., $12–$18, 871-2224

>> Stage Listings