by AMY BARRATT

It's shaping up to be a very literary winter season on our local stages, featuring prose works adapted to the stage and a prose writer writing for the stage, as well as work by some of the finest contemporary playwrights from here and abroad.

There are two openings of note this very night (Jan. 15): Limbes/Limbo by Nancy Huston, co-produced by Momentum at Usine C (see article on p. 38) and De Profundis, Gravy Bath's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's last letter from prison, at the Saidye 'B' Off-Centre. When I first heard about this piece in November, it was a one-man show with writing credits going to Ivana Shein, a recent National Theatre School playwrighting graduate. It has since grown to accommodate two performers: Don Anderson (who was Henry Wotton in GB's Portrait of Dorian Gray last summer) and Angela Galuppo. It has apparently also morphed into a collective creation, with both the text and the direction now attributed to "the company." The production runs through Jan. 23, and tickets are a steal at $10, or $8 for students and Saidye subscribers.

While Wilde cries out to us from underground and the depths of his despair, Sylvia Plath is still trying to shake off that Bell Jar in La Cloche de verre, directed by Brigitte Haentjens for her company Sybillines at Théâtre de Quat'Sous. Running Jan. 26–March 6, this is a one-woman show starring Céline Bonnier.

Centaur starts the new year off with the latest Michel Tremblay in translation. Translated by Linda Gaboriau, Past Perfect is set around 1930 and relates the early history of one of Tremblay's most memorable characters, Albertine (Jan. 27–March 7). Then in March, Centaur snags one of the most successful Canadian plays ever, The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey. It's a moving story that's also notable for its gentle mockery of the early-'70s theatre scene in Canada: a young actor convinces two old farmers to let him move in with them as research for a collective piece about rural life.

The Saidye continues in its "modern classics" vein with Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. A co-production with the Manitoba Theatre Centre, it's directed by Michael Shamata and runs Feb. 17–29.

Craving more Kane

Those who can't get enough of deceased British playwright Sarah Kane will be pleased to know that The Other Theatre is remounting its En manque, a French translation of Kane's Crave, which they originally produced last spring. Not to be confused with the recent Temenos production of the play in English. Feb. 17–28 at the MAI.

infinitheatre continues its love affair with novelist-playwright Trevor Ferguson with his latest play, Barnacle Wood, in which the rail workers of Long Long Short Long have mutated into itinerant fish cleaners scrounging for work under a pier. That's at the Bain St-Michel (otherwise known as the Infinite Bath) opening on March 18.

Sabooge theatre returns to town with a work now titled Fathom, but originally known as Fishboy, about a Victorian lad with an unusual talent (shades of their last production, seen at last year's Wildside festival, which was titled Hatched but could be described as Birdgirl). If this show is anything like that one, it will feature imaginative staging with a small number of performers taking on multiple roles and dazzling us with their storytelling. It's only slated to play March 17–20 at Calixa-Lavallée, so don't blink or you might miss it.

Finally, McGill's TNC theatre is doing Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart now through Jan. 24, and Imago Theatre's Snowman, by Greg MacArthur, opens Jan. 22 at the Monument-National.

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