Copyright 1995 Southam Inc.   
The Gazette (Montreal) 


October 7, 1995, Saturday, FINAL EDITION 

SECTION: ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. C2 

LENGTH: 538 words 

HEADLINE: Character study; Carver sinks into female role 

BYLINE: PAT DONNELLY; GAZETTE 

BODY: 


Brent Carver has played many roles during his busy career. But this is the first time he has had to adjust to life with a bustle. 

Petticoats, corsets and padding in the appropriate places all help to create the illusion that Carver is a circa 1912 transplanted French countess and mother to the handsome young Vallier in Lilies. 

But the costume and the topknot hairdo are only the externals. It's Carver's phenomenal concentration that sets him apart from the other actors on the Lilies set. Others use the breaks between shoots to stroll or nap. Carver sinks even deeper into his character, as if in a trance. He drifts across the dining room like a frail Edwardian ghost looking for her smelling salts. 

All this for a scene in which he only has one line. 

Carver's big scene, the one in which the countess gets tragic news about her husband, was slated for the afternoon. By lunchtime, he decided he couldn't handle an interview after all. He was too busy gearing up. But all trace of the prima donna was gone by noon the next day. Over the phone, he sounded quite himself again. 

"It (Lilies) requires that kind of focus," he explained. "We're playing 1952 and going into 1912. We're telling a story within a story." 

He doesn't think of the countess as insane. She's just someone who creates her own reality. Like Remy Girard, Carver bases the character on his own paternal grandmother. She was from England and never quite got over the shock of landing in rural B.C. In this, she was much like the countess, who finds Roberval a bit of a comedown after Paris. 

The countess isn't Carver's first female role. "I once played Maria in Twelfth Night at university (the University of British Columbia)." 

And, of course, he won a Tony Award for playing a man (Molina) who wanted to be a woman in Kiss of the Spider Woman. 

He has played quite a few gay roles but doesn't consider himself a specialist in the genre. "I hope my specialty is acting." 

Carver's Broadway success wasn't one of those overnight things. Long before Kiss, he had been the leading man of choice in English Canadian theatre. He had played Hamlet and numerous other roles at Stratford and had already won a couple of Dora Mavor Moore awards in Toronto theatre (Bent and Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love). His film credits included The Wars, directed by Robin Phillips. He was no stranger to Canadian television, either. "I've been very lucky," he said. 

Carver's most recent stage work was playing Shakespeare's Richard III at the Citadel in Edmonton, directed by Phillips. On television, he died most poignantly, of AIDS, in Street Legal. His last film, The Song Spinner, in which he shares top billing with John Neville and Patti Lupone, recently opened the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax. 

Carver, who is from Cranbrook, B.C., said he has no trouble identifying with Michel Marc Bouchard's writing. "Maybe it's because I come from a small town, too." 

And he's thrilled to be working with such a stellar Quebec cast. "They are the best actors. So devoted and dedicated. And with the best sense of humor. It just astounds me to see the way that everyone just moves in and out with language." 

GRAPHIC: Brent Carver. Plays countess 

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

LOAD-DATE: October 8, 1995