Lilies, directed by John Greyson, is based on a play by Michel
Marc Bouchard. The script was translated into English by Linda
Gaborian.
Set in 1952 at a Quebec prison, it tells the story of two men,
one imprisoned as a murderer, and the other a bishop in the
Catholic Church, who meet for a deathbed confession. But instead
of the old murderer, a childhood friend of the bishop, confessing
his sins, we and the bishop see a play put on by other prisoners
to re-create an incident in their youth.
It is the power of this story that has convinced a prison
chaplain, prison guards and the other prisoners to put on this
play and force the bishop to see it. It is a love story between
two youth, Simon (who is now the old prisoner) and Vallier, the
son of a French nobleman who has abandoned his family.
The story is set in a 1912 Quebec village on a lake, a resort
town called Lac St. Jean. Since the prisoners are all men, almost
every character is played by man. Brent Carver (who won the Tony
for Kiss of the Spider Woman and was nominated for a Tony this
year in Parade) plays Vallier's mother, a wispy, other world
person who pines for her lost life and is a romantic soul.
Bilodeau, the boy who later becomes bishop, is jealous of Vallier,
because, he, too, is in love with Simon. His jealousy and his
religious fervor is the catalyst for the story's tragic ending. (BTW,
the actor who plays Simon's tyrannical father also plays the
father in Smoke Signals).
Part of the play is performed in a dingy prison chapel. Magically,
the setting changes to the village in 1912. These reversals, in
my opinion, helps make the more theatrical elements of the play
from being too stagey.
While all three of the major female roles played by men were well
done, Carver was really good as the mother. The woman who played
the Baroness was also quite capable. Despite the switching of
gender and setting, one still gets pulled into the story and
forgets the trickery used to tell it.
The prisoners do or say very little outside of their play roles.
As individuals, only the older Simon is a real character. Perhaps
that's to keep us focused on the story.
One other play-within-a-play note. The two young boys start the
story with their rehearsing their roles in a church play about
the death of St. Sebastian
One of the things about Lilies that I enjoyed was seeing the two
old men, sitting side by side, watching this episode from their
young lives replayed before them. At some point, even the Bishop,
held against his will, seems to have lost his resistance and is
absorbed as the the rest of us in the play. "Vallier was
much heavier than this boy," he tells the older Simon at one
point (aren't we all critics at heart?). This drawing in brings
him to actually sit at the table of Simon's engagement party, a
silent guest.
I did have a puzzle about how the young religious fanantic ended
up becoming a bishop. Like many positions of authority, I would
think that becoming a bishop would require some degree of
political skills and ambition that the young kid didn't seem to
have at all. I would think that being fanatical would have
lessened his chances of becoming a bishop.
