Brief synopsis
Canada 1952. Bishop Jean Bilodeau is asked to take the final confession of a terminally ill prisoner, Simon Doucet. They are not strangers to each other. In fact, they have history. Under Simon’s direction, a group of prisoners perform a play for the bishop.
The play is Simon’s final confession. When watching it Bilodeau is faced with events that took place forty years earlier in the Canadian village of Roberval, where Simon and Jean were students at Saint Sebastian College.
In 1912 Simon fell in love with the young count Vallier de Tilly, a ruined French aristocrat living in exile with his mother in Roberval. Countess de Tilly had waited years for her husband to return from France, where he was preparing the restoration of the monarchy. One day the mysterious Lydie-Anne de Rozier enters the scene in her hot air balloon. She tells them that she has seen the Count, and assures the Countess that very soon he will ask his wife and son to return to Paris.
The two young men Vallier and Simon begin a secret relationship, which overturns their world. But the relationship does not stay secret for long. A jealous and sly Jean Bilodeau discovers their love and exposes it. In prison, the elderly Jean Bilodeau is once again faced with the misdeeds of his past. Misdeeds for which not he, but Simon, was forced to pay. Through this play Simon proves that he has been wrongfully imprisoned for forty years.
Creatives
| Direction: | Martin Michel |
| Script and lyrics: | Allard Blom |
| Music: | Sam Verhoeven |
| Musical director and arrangements: | Pol Vanfleteren |
| Stage and costume design: | Arno Bremers |
| Lighting design: | Micha Meijer |
| Sound design: | Philippe Peirsman |
| Resident director and company manager: | Tim Van der Straeten |
| Original script: | Michel Marc Bouchard |
Productions
“Lelies” premièred on 20 November 2011 in Antwerp. The leading roles were played by Hans Peter Janssens, Door Van Boeckel, Timo Descamps and Matthew Michel. In 2012 the production won 5 Flemish Musical Awards, including that for ‘best musical’, ‘best direction’ and ‘best performance content’.
A slightly adapted version premièred in February 2015 and ran in Flanders and in the former M-Lab in Amsterdam.
In October 2015 there followed a symphonic version of the production in the Stadsschouwburg Antwerpen.
In 2019 and 2022 NDM Producties performed a Dutch version of the musical, and in 2023 the Bohemian company from Sint-Niklaas returned the musical to Flanders.
In September 2025, producer InTeam Productions in Antwerp will bring a new professional version of “Lelies” starring Wim Van den Driessche and Brecht Callerwaert, among others.
