by AMY BARRATT

These days, Colleen Curran thinks in threes. The Montrealer recently sent her third novel - the final in the trilogy that began with Something Drastic - to the publisher. She's now working on a script that will round out a trilogy of her plays, which so far includes Maple Lodge and Casa de Mary Margaret, currently playing at Village Theatre in Hudson.

The title character in Casa de Mary Margaret, Curran explains, is the mother who never appeared in Maple Lodge. "After seeing the play, audience people would say to me, ‘We want to meet the mother.'" So Curran wrote Casa de, in which Margaret and her beau are the winners of a "suitcase dance."

Faced with my blank reaction, Curran says, "I think it's an Ontario thing. You have to arrive at the dance with your suitcase packed for a three-day vacation. They tell you if it's a warm or cool destination and that's it. You have to be ready to leave directly from the dance." So it is that Margaret is a no-show at the family cottage, where Maple Lodge is set.

Casa de Mary Margaret is set in sunny Puerto Vallarta, the popular tourist destination that, the play reminds us, was just a sleepy little fishing village until John Huston (with Richard Burton and Liz Taylor along for the ride) went there to film The Night of the Iguana.

The clash of cultures at the heart of the play is encapsulated in the title: the exotic, daiquiri-soaked "Casa de" meeting the woollen skirt and knee-highs of Mary Margaret. The Village Theatre production, directed by Andrew Johnston, stars Jane Hackett as the force of nature that is Margaret. Partly based on the playwright's own mother, Curran admits she's a handful. "But if we're lucky, we had a mother like her, because she'll always stick up for you," she adds.

Curran herself reckons that she has spent only three hours in Mexico in her life, driving down to Tijuana once from California. Luckily, she says, she has friends who know the country rather well, including one who is a liaison for a travel company and the model for a character in Casa de Mary Margaret. And then there's the possibility that Curran's Mexico doesn't have to be a literal rendition of that country. Curran is known for her love of old movies, especially from the '50s, so maybe it's okay if her Mexico more closely resembles the Hollywood version than the real article.

Meanwhile, the writer has "five or six" projects on the go, something she says is normal for her. A couple of novels, and a couple of new plays in addition to Queen of the Roost, the third in the Mary Margaret trilogy (it deals with what happens when the matriarch returns from Mexico).

A while back, Curran adapted her first novel, Something Drastic, to the stage, and it was done at Manitoba's Prairie Theatre Exchange. In early 2005, it will be directed by expatriate Montrealer Marcia Tratt at the Tarragon Extra Space in Toronto.

"I'm thrilled," says Curran, "because I saw a production of Cakewalk [an early Curran work] that Marcia directed a few years ago, and she got all the jokes. Sometimes you see your work and you barely recognize it, but she gets me." The production, which Tratt is directing for a hot young company called Splode, may be coming to Montreal next spring.

Casa de Mary Margaret continues to Aug. 29 at Village Theatre West (28 Wharf, Hudson), Tues–Sat at 8 p.m., matinées Thurs, Sat & Sun, (450) 458-5361

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