by AMY BARRATT

You've got to hand it to the folks at La Licorne. The unassuming little theatre next to the bingo hall on Papineau is the place in this city to find exciting new works from around the world.

In recent years they've brought us Québécois translations of some of the hottest new Irish plays (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Howie the Rookie). This week they're gleefully introducing Montrealers to the biggest thing in Scottish theatre since Trainspotting, playwright Gregory Burke's spectacularly successful 2001 play Gagarin Way.

Burke was fresh off a plane from Buenos Aires, where his play is also being produced, when I spoke to him last week. He was bright and articulate in spite of the jet lag - maybe because that's getting to be his normal condition. This first play has had a remarkable career in the two years since it was originally produced by Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre.

Gagarin Way has been translated, the playwright reckons, into 19 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and Slovenian. The français version only opens next January in Paris. The Montreal premiere, co-produced by resident Licorne company Théâtre de la Manufacture and Trans-Théâtre, is an original translation by Yvan Bienvenue. The play had its Canadian premiere in English last April in Toronto.

There can be no doubt that Burke has struck a nerve with the public with this play, not just at home but throughout the West. Some say it taps into the anti-globalization energy in our culture, or even a weird nostalgia for the simple days of Capitalism vs. Socialism. Others say it's just a darn good laugh. Not bad for a play that involves a kidnapping and, apparently, a violent climax. Burke says he's just following the advice of the great Irish playwright Brendan Behan, to "get them laughing and then stop them laughing."

Gagarin Way has been described as a political play, but, says the author, "I actually set out to write about the absence of politics in my life. The part of Scotland where I come from [west Fife] had a radical tradition. It's the only place in Britain that ever returned a Communist MP. I wanted to write about where all that energy went."

The region also had a strong mining and manufacturing tradition, and a strong union presence - all of which are now gone. Thank you, Maggie Thatcher. Some factories still stand, but now they belong to multinationals.

In the '90s, after dropping out of university, Burke, now 35, had ended up in a typical dead-end factory job making printer cartridges. He remembers that, listening to the dark humour of his co-workers, he would think, "I should be writing this down." Eventually he left and did pretty much that. "If you took all the gripes of the workers to their logical conclusion," he says, "you'd get this play."

So where does he stand personally on the use of violence to achieve political ends?

"I think the violence of the weak against the strong is brilliant. It's the ultimate act you can do," he muses, "but then how do you justify that? Passive resistance is absolutely an option. I'm not saying be violent, but I am a product of my environment. Where I grew up if you couldn't get your hands up, don't go out of the house."

Gagarin Way, at La Licorne to Nov. 15, $17-$24, 523-2246

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