Of all the techniques a skilled painter must possess, perhaps none is so fundamental as his or her ability to master the art of light and dark. The Madonna Painter is a prime example of this notion, dramatized. Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard’s play, in its English-language premiere at the Factory Theatre, is a carefully shaded composition that is both deeply funny and acutely tragic.
Set in a remote Quebec town in 1918, The Madonna Painter tells the story of a young, handsome priest (Marc Bendavid) who commissions an Italian artist (Juan Chioran) to paint a fresco of the Virgin Mary for the town, believing that the work of art will invigorate the town’s faith and help ward off the outbreak of the Spanish Flu. The arrival of the painter, however, has the opposite result as his presence becomes the catalyst for a number of surprising turns of fate resulting in a crisis of faith for the people of Saint-Coeur de Marie.
The play is refreshingly rife with complex female characters, and the actors in Factory Theatre’s production rise to the challenge of Bouchard’s script, perhaps none more so than Jenny Young as Mary of the Secrets, the troubled town outcast who becomes a most reluctant muse and model to the painter. Young carefully crafts a Mary that is at once melancholy and mysterious and achingly vulnerable, and it is this vulnerability that allows the audience to invest deeply in Mary and her journey. Young and Chioran also share an electrifying chemistry and keep the audience well-engaged whenever they share the stage. Miranda Edwards and Shannon Taylor as Mary Frances and Mary Anne, respectively, also give delightful performances. Edwards’ delivery of a monologue mid-play is nuanced and heartbreaking.
Though Taylor occasionally falters with the dramatic material, particularly at the beginning, her “audition” for the painter is by far one of the most hilarious moments of the production, and her performance grows much stronger from thereon. Of the women, only Nicola Correia-Damude as Mary Louise struggles consistently with the language. Though Correia-Damude clearly respects Bouchard’s script, the formality of her delivery is filled in a sense with an excess of reverence for the poetry in her lines. She is thus at times inconsistent in tone with the rest of the cast, who more successfully balance the richness of the language with the demands of creating empathetic characters. Bendavid, too, has some difficulty, delivering from within a rather repetitive vocal range and cadence that changes little from the play’s start to finish, and detracts somewhat from the overall impact of the young priest’s emotional journey. Bendavid comes alive, however, in his scenes with Taylor; a particular scene showcasing the two towards the end of the play even left some members the audience gasping.
The sound is mostly live, adding to the immediacy of the audience experience. Some of the prerecorded sounds, then, can be rather jarring after one gets used to the frequency of the live sounds being produced. Sue LePage’s set is minimalist: a sky of stars, a forest consisting of tall gold geometric cones topped by branches, a table and chairs on a raised platform in the centre functioning as the set for indoor scenes is simple, effective, and all that is needed to create the world of the play. The ornate gold proscenium at the Factory is cleverly and subtly lighted, giving one the impression of a gilded picture frame.
Though The Madonna Painter is set 90 years ago, the production feels fresh and contemporary. Bouchard’s writing is poetic indeed, but that poetry is also economic and rarely feels indulgent (a testament to the actors who speak it), and is complemented by sharp, witty dialogue and turns of phrase. And despite it drawing heavily upon Catholicism, The Madonna Painter is accessible for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
With the H1N1 epidemic at the forefront of the contemporary audience’s conscious, the panic and frenzy surrounding the Spanish Flu of 1918 is instantly recognizable and relatable. We find ourselves engaging with the characters not as historical relics, but as people struggling through crises of humanity not at all dissimilar to our own. Above all, Bouchard’s Madonna Painter explores the chiaroscuro of faith—faith in institutions, faith in love, faith in art, and faith in faith itself—skillfully capturing its lightest lights, and its darkest darks and, ultimately, asking us to consider what we would do when we suddenly find ourselves in those bewildering moments of grey.
The Madonna Painter runs at the Factory Theatre through Dec. 13.
