Few Canadians scribbled and daubed during Paris's Lost Generation heyday - Morley Callaghan was one, John Glassco and his companion Graeme Taylor were two more - so Groundwater/Theatre Passe Muraille's new production Montparnasse, which runs to April 2, will be worth a look if only for its interesting premise: Two young women from the ghastly Protestant redoubt that was Hogtown in the 1920s head off to Paris. One of them is an artist's model, the other a painter, and pretty soon both are dropping their kit and their inhibitions and posing for many of the artists who flocked to the 14th arrondissement, some of whom went on to great fame if not always great fortune.
Since the play is a two-hander actresses Maev Beaty and Erin Shields will portray a series of characters who gathered in the Place Vavin so many years ago - one of them being Henry Miller. But, ooops! Henry Miller was not a member of the Lost Generation as Jon Kaplan's article about the show in this week's NOW tells us; he passed through Paris very briefly in the 1920s, before moving on to London, Italy and the Riviera. Miller, ever the iconoclast, went to live in Paris in 1930, when the period of the Lost Generation was well and truly over. So let's call it artistic licence.
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