by AMY BARRATT

Centaur Theatre caps off a strong season with Tiger's Heart by Kit Brennan, an acclaimed Canadian playwright who happens to be a Montrealer. The play is inspired by the true story of Dr. James Barry (1795–1865), who was discovered to be a woman only after his/her death. I have not given anything away by telling you that much - this is not The Crying Game, though there is one scene…

Tiger's Heart is one of those modern plays which, though set in a historical period, reflects the attitudes and concerns of the present day far more than those of the time. And that's fine. We are not a 19th-century audience, after all, but a 21st-century one. Whether expressing her sexual side was a concern or not for Dr. Barry, it is certainly one of the things that we are most curious about 200 years later. It's nice to think that Dr. Barry empathized with the plight of women, but it's equally possible that, Stockholm-syndrome-style, s/he disdained her own sex.

As Barry, Stephanie Baptist convincingly conveys the doctor's zeal for social change, but not the sexual passion supposedly burning beneath the topcoat. Perhaps with a few more performances she will relax into this admittedly very demanding role. If only she wasn't so physically reminiscent of Cynthia Nixon in the first season of Sex and the City - the stride, the butch wardrobe. Simply because he seems to be having so much fun, Michael Rudder stands out in an able cast of seven.

With the setting of Cape Town, South Africa, the playwright gets to address - oh, post-modern bliss! - racial as well as gender issues. Director Greg Kramer, working with John C. Dinning (set and costumes), Luc Prairie (lighting) and Keith Thomas (original music), has set the action in an 1820s Cape Town of the imagination which is anything but naturalistic.

For a brief five-day period, until The Shape of Things closed last weekend, Centaur was running two contemporary plays featuring nudity. This theatre's reputation as a staid old anglo institution is in serious peril.

It's a small world

Théâtres du monde gets underway tonight and there's not a six-hour marathon in sight.

Under the same artistic direction as the biennial Festival de théâtre des Amériques, TdM is similar in character - showcasing avant-garde theatre from home and, mostly, abroad - but more modest in scope.

At last year's FTA, Robert Lepage's epic La trilogie des dragons was the hot ticket, even though it was staged in an out-of-the-way warehouse and ran the aforementioned six hours. This year's mini-festival features four productions, in French, English and Hungarian.

The first offering in this intellectual Olympics is titled Du serment de l'écrivain du roi et de Diderot. Co-produced by theatre collectives from Belgium and the Netherlands, this French-language production is based upon the influential essay "The Paradox of the Actor," by Denis Diderot. Three actors put to the test of performance his theory that actors should not concern themselves with feeling what the character feels but rather should strive to elicit an emotional response in the viewer. May 13 to 16 at Studio André-Pagé, National Theatre School

Next up is W – Munkáscirkusz (Workers' Circus) presented by Krétakör Theatre of Budapest in Hungarian with French and English supertitles. It's an adaptation of Georg Büchner's enigmatic masterpiece Woyzeck by wunderkind director Árpád Schilling. The production, which has Woyzeck trapped inside a steel cage, is described as a "cruel sideshow of exploitation, treason, manipulation and humiliation." Sounds like Schilling has been reading the papers. May 18 to 20 at Usine C.

The laughs continue with Guerre, a recent play by Lars Norén, who is considered the greatest Swedish playwright since Strindberg. (Coincidentally, an earlier work, Démons, is running at Théâtre Prospero until May 22.) The synopsis of Guerre also sounds chillingly like current events: "The war is over, and the journalists have headed off" to the next hot spot while, "destroyed and abandoned, the survivors no longer really exist for the outside world." The play is set in an unnamed country, leaving the audience to hear echoes of Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia or more recent conflicts. Guerre is performed in French. May 25 to 27 at Espace GO.

Finally, Toronto's Jacob Wren and Nadia Ross are back in town with their latest work-in-progress, Revolutions in Therapy. Even if their philosophical, non-linear works defy description, these guys are usually worth checking out. I like this show's tagline: "A Freudian slips where angels fear to tread." May 26–28 at Usine C.

Tiger's Heart, to May 30 at Centaur. Tickets $20–$38, 288-3161. Tickets for all Théâtres du monde shows available from Billetterie Articulée, 844-2172

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