by AMY BARRATT

Michel Marc Bouchard is messed up about religion in a way that's really good for his art.

The playwright's Les Feluettes delved, in a very theatrical way, into the abuse of boys in a Catholic school. That play, written in 1987, was revisited last season at Espace GO under the direction of Serge Denoncourt. The production won accolades from critics and the public alike, a success that Ginette Noiseux and company are obviously hoping to duplicate by fixing Denoncourt up with a new Bouchard text this season, Le peintre des madones. The text reflects Bouchard's fascination with history as well as the places where sex and religion intersect. The mise-en-scène, with set by Guillaume Lord and lighting by Martin Labrecque, is simply stunning.

The play, subtitled ou la naissance d'un tableau, is nominally set in Lac St-Jean, where the playwright grew up, and is inspired in part by a fresco that actually exists in the Église de Saint-Coeur de Marie. An Italian painter was in fact invited to the town to paint a Madonna in the 1950s, but Bouchard moves the action to 1918. The Great War is drawing to a close and English Canadian soldiers are returning home, bringing with them the deadly Spanish flu.

An ardent young priest (Renaud Paradis) comes up with the idea of the painting as a way to demonstrate the piety of the village and thus ward off the disease. (Bouchard sees the rural Quebec of the time as practically medieval.) Into this town whose young men have all been taken away by the war, many never to return, comes the beautiful painter, Alessandro. Denoncourt has done the right thing in bringing a genuine Italian actor (Giorgio Lupano) in to play this role. He is a brand-new face among the familiar québécois actors (a community about the size of a village, come to think) and Denoncourt gives the audience a long moment to drink him in just as the villagers do, before he has spoken a word.

The village girls are thrown into a delirium when it's announced that he will choose one of them as the model for his Madonna, and there's an amusing scene where they all "audition" for him. No one is happy with his ultimate choice, even the girl he chooses.

Lord's scenography calls for dark beams to make up the skeleton of a structure that could be a barn or a church, or even an inn, and the floor is covered in black dirt. The action takes place on multiple levels and is lit in high contrast like a Rembrandt or a Caravaggio.

Le peintre des madones seems like a shoo-in to repeat Les Feluettes' Masque win for best Montreal production. Do not miss it.

Innovative eyre

Back into the literary canon for inspiration goes Gabrielle Soskin's Persephone Productions. The company, which arrived on the English theatre scene in 2000 with an adaptation of Anna Karenina (and has continued to produce shows with literary merit and, generally, strong roles for women), presents Jane Eyre, starting next Wednesday, April 21, at Théâtre La Chapelle (3700 St-Dominique), and running until May 8. The "innovative" adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel is by Polly Teale.

Le peintre des madones ou la naissance d'un tableau, to May 1 at Espace Go (4890 St-Laurent), $18–$28, 845-4890

>> Stage Listings