Michael Marc Bouchard’s Lilies is a strange excursion. Exotic and refined. Obtuse and dark. Emerging from the staging of a play, depicting the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, Lilies feels a bit like catching butterflies blindfolded. Or watching the slow creation of a quilt, one patch at a time. Or hearing the same riddle, over and over. You really must focus. Father Saint-Michel teaches Drama for a Roman Catholic school and though he’s clearly devoted, the homoerotic undercurrent in his productions have enraged some of the parents. The two leads, Simon and Vallier, are clearly lovers, and Bilodeau (as a young man) reprimands them for their depraved behavior. The drama more or less polarizes between the ignorant and sophisticated, the gentle and judgmental. But not necessarily the way we might think.
At the beginning of Lilies a group of prisoners overtake Bishop Bilodeau and force him to watch a play, exposing an incident in 1912 that ruined Simon’s, Vallier’s and the lives of others. Bilodeau is invited to read his character’s part, but he refuses. The female characters are played by men, not convincingly, but there’s an element of sincerity and dedication that feels odd. As each character tells his or her story, we grasp the significance Saint Sebastian’s intense love for another man, and how the arrows flew when they lashed him to a tree. Bouchard doles out scraps of information, and often seems to leave the path altogether, though this narrative seems to turn on montage. There’s an undeniable dreamlike quality to Lilies, a kind of skewed logic that counter-intuitively seems to balance the otherworldly content.
Consider the intoxicating gestalt of Lilies. Men in drag capturing the essence of feminine fancy and yearning. A contemptuous kiss planted on the lips of a clueless homophobe. Cynicism as “cure” for desire. Repeated evocations of a hot air balloon on the horizon, on a mission to rescue you from an empty existence. The father who beats his son (out of love?) . The nurturing mother, trapped in fantasy. Teenage boys who are not just experimenting, but stuck on some kind of cusp. Numerous elements converge to draw us into a realm where tenderness is forbidden to men, where emotion and beauty are denied them. Bouchard floats us upon feathery clouds, but cottonmouths swim there, too. It’s nearly impossible to hang on plot, because of the play’s construction, but sometimes showing us the scaffolding is a sound strategy. The damage that comes from a toxic code of masculinity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, so Lilies shows us the gears and baffles beneath the surface. Do not miss this one of a kind experience.
Theatre Profile Productions presents Lilies, playing through June v9th, 2018. Bath House Cultural Center. 521 E. Lawther Drive, Dallas, TX 75218. 817-886-0660.