by AMY BARRATT

What kid hasn't dreamed of having the power to disappear - whether to undertake important Harry-Potter-esque missions, or just to steal cookies from the cookie jar?

28 28, a new creation from Théâtre Deuxième Réalité, is a fairy tale for adults about a man given the gift of invisibility at birth. The play, written and directed by T2R's artistic director, Alexandre Marine, has just opened at Théâtre La Chapelle.

Asked about the meaning of the numeric title, Marine is evasive, saying he doesn't want to give too much away. He explains that the main character, played by Igor Ovadis, is an artist. He has turned his special ability into a performance. 28 28 is also the name of his show, and these numbers have some special significance in his life. Hmm, a guy who's an artist, and invisible... there may be a message here about the respect, or lack thereof, that societies pay to art and artists.

The action of the play takes place 15 years after Ovadis's character has had to flee his home country (somewhere in Europe) for somewhere in the New World - "Probably Montreal," Marine says. It moves back and forth between the present and the past through the character's dreams. Ovadis is supported by two other T2R regulars: Vitali Makarov and Maria Monakhova, as well as Peter Batakliev, a familiar face to both French and English audiences (Waiting for Godot, Le mouton et la baleine). This is a company of people who know first-hand the experience of leaving behind a home country to make a new life elsewhere.

The play also deals, Marine says, with "the modern world, and a war happening, that seems to be happening far away, that seems not to be disturbing our life. But I think that we are all responsible for everything that's happening in the world."

Although he has been directing for many years, and began his career as an actor, Marine has become a playwright only recently. 28 28 is only his second original script, though he has done many radical adaptations (his Hamlet, winner of a Prix de la critique in 1999, was barely recognizable as Shakespeare's Hamlet.) "At a certain point," he says, by way of explaining his new role as auteur, "as you're getting older, you want to express something that only you can express. And another thing was the artistic needs of our company. I wrote this piece thinking about our company."

As a director, working on 28 28 is different, not so much because it's his own text as because it's an unknown text. Marine's signature style involves a lot of deconstructing of classic texts. With Hamlet, he could assume the audience had a certain familiarity with the story, and saw his job more as commenting on, even contradicting the text. This time, his first concern has to be to tell the story.

"When a story is being presented for the first time, when there's no tradition, you have to do some things in a very clear, almost classical way," says the director.

But don't imagine that Marine will be abandoning his "physical, festive" approach to theatre in favour of kitchen-sink realism. There is, after all, the little matter of that invisibility.

28 28, Conte Pour Adultes is at Théâtre La Chapelle (3700 St-Dominique) to April 23, $17–$20, 843-7738

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