The sea is calm and weather conditions are fair as the ocean liner Empress of France sets sail from Montreal, bound for England and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. But, in the luxurious first class quarters, the passengers are in a flutter. Three young girls, all called Elizabeth, have won a competition to attend the great event - first-class passage, lovely frocks and a seat in the front stalls included.
Party fixer Mlle Lavalle is all at sea herself, attempting to marshal the giggling Elizabeths into some kind of dignified deportment and pestering a party of North American Indians in steerage to don feathered head-dresses for the occasion.
Government minister Joseph Gendron, his wife Alice and daughter Marguerite have their own worries. Joseph's are mainly to do with the diplomatic and political demands of this massive state occasion. Alice bitterly shrugs off his professional preoccupations; she has no truck with the British, since two sons were killed and the third maimed in the largely-unreported, botched invasion of Dieppe in 1942. Meanwhile, Margeurite, a concert pianist, is struggling to attain the appropriate frame of mind to play Chopin at the coronation gala.
But their worries pale beside the drama unfolding around a powerful mafia chief and his two young sons, fleeing Montreal for new lives and identities in England and embroiled in a sickening deal with a diplomat who can provide their passports - at a price.
Jackie Doyle's exquisite European premiere production for Prime Cut is highly polished, silky-smooth and perfectly paced. Her design team of David Craig, Conleth White and couturier Alison-Jayne Matthews has capitalised on the sheeny, nautical look of the Waterfront's BT Studio to entice us inside this intriguing, stylish world of privilege, wealth and suffering. Michel Marc Bouchard's themes are monumental and universal - filial sacrifice, retribution, reconciliation, martyrdom - and quite beautifully written and realised.
Among a uniformly excellent cast, Derek Halligan, Sean Kearns, Dan Gordon, Kathy Kiera Clarke, Des Nealon and young Marc Caldwell stand out and, surely, Stella McCusker has rarely done anything better than the acid, cut-glass, subversive Alice Gendron. The whole thing is simply divine.
The Coronation Voyage is at the Waterfront Hall's BT Studio until November 18th. Box Office telephone number: Belfast 90334455.