It has taken almost five years for Michel Marc Bouchard’s 1995 play, Le Voyage du couronnement, to reach English language audiences as The Coronation Voyage. But the wait has been worthwhile. This play is Bouchard’s emotionally charged exploration of a familiar theme in his work: forgiveness across generations. This time he navigates the rough waters of Canadian history following the Second World War.

For each passenger en route to England for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in the spring of 1953, this is a transforming voyage. Among the cast is The Chief, a notorious kingpin of organized crime in Montreal. A double-crosser who has bribed the political elite, The Chief is able to escape only because his passage has been arranged by the Montreal police in exchange for incriminating others. But a cruel form of punishment by proxy has already been meted out. Henchmen have brutally crushed the hands of his eldest son, a musical prodigy.

Now with forged passports, The Chief and his two sons will change identities before arriving in England. But during the journey, the scheming diplomat who holds the new passports sets another price: “Your family’s freedom in exchange for one night with your youngest son Sandro.” Sandro is 13 years old.

Bouchard looks at this father and his two sons through the lens of the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. The beaches at Dieppe stand in for the biblical altar as Bouchard evokes historic grievances between Canada and Quebec. “There are 1,200 Canadian mothers who gave birth to extras for a dress rehearsal,” snaps the resentment-filled wife of a politician who is also on-board. She is referring to the death of her son and the crippling of another son in Normandy in 1942. Earlier, the diplomat dryly notes, “Historians always disagree on one point: history.”

Like Bouchard’s earlier plays, Lilies and The Tale of Teeka – also translated by Gaboriau – this is highly crafted theatre about ambiguous relationships that endure rather than resolve neatly.