Dressed in a Victorian-era night-gown, Martha MacIsaac is shooting her final scene of the day on the set of Emily of New Moon, the latest television series to be culled from the novels of Prince Edward Island's Lucy Maud Montgomery. The script calls for the 13-year-old actress, who plays the title role of Emily Starr, to awaken abruptly from a bad dream, a look of horror passing over her face as she imagines that the wooden angel on a nearby wall is swinging wildly before her eyes. MacIsaac captures the tense moment in two quick takes as Marlene Matthews, supervising producer of the series, looks on approvingly. Asked if MacIsaac--a Charlottetown native who had never acted professionally prior to landing the role of Emily--is always such a quick study, Matthews laughs. "Actually, that one took longer than most," she says. Martha's made a bet with our directors: if she can do a scene in a single take, they have to give her a dollar. I tell you, she's been raking in the bucks."

Discovering the precocious MacIsaac resolved the most critical casting choice in the Emily series, which wraps up shooting near Summerside, P.E.I., this week and airs its first episode on the CBC on Jan. 4. Playing the dark-eyed, pigtailed orphan who is sent to live with resentful relatives in rural Prince Edward Island at the turn of the century, MacIsaac is in nearly every scene of the 26 one-hour episodes. Matthews recalls that when she first came to the Island to scout shooting locations, she stumbled upon a tourism brochure with a picture of a young girl who perfectly fit her image of Emily. Tracking MacIsaac down through the provincial tourism department--the girl had been hired after she auditioned for a TV and print ad campaign--Matthews convinced her to try out for the Emily part. But figuring that she could not simply pick the first girl she saw to carry what would be a $1-million-per-episode series, Matthews proceeded to audition hundreds of other children from across Canada. In the end, she came back to the cherubic MacIsaac. "I couldn't get her out of my head," explains Matthews. "Martha is Emily."

MacIsaac was not the only discovery Matthews made during that initial trip to the Island. At that point, the producers of Emily--Salter Street Films of Halifax and Montreal's Cinar Films--had not yet decided whether to shoot the series in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or Quebec. Although the Toronto~based Matthews had worked for six years as script editor and senior writer on the Road to Avonlea--the popular CBC series, also adapted from Montgomery's writings, which ended last year--she had never before visited the author's birthplace. In fact, much to the consternation of Islanders, Avonlea was shot entirely in Uxbridge, Ont., 68 km north of Toronto. But once she toured the province, Matthews--who also wrote most of the Emily scripts--knew the series had to be filmed there. "The Island is a star in the show," she says. "The red-earthed cliffs overlooking the sea, the rich, green farm fields--it lends a tone to the series that we just couldn't get in Toronto."

Certainly, Emily is visually sumptuous, a postcard for the Island's many charms--which helps explain why the provincial government agreed to invest $1.9 million in the production. But it also offers a much darker take on Island life than Avonlea or Montgomery's most famous creation, Anne of Green Gables. Written 20 years after the Anne books, the Emily of New Moon trilogy reflected the sensibilities of a more mature author who had suffered personal setbacks. Montgomery endured an unhappy marriage to Ewan Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister who was a manic-depressive. She, too, was given to periods of deep depression, finding her main solace in the act of writing.

The television series stays true to the starker vision of the Emily books. In the opening episode, for example, Emily must cope with the sudden death of her father, Douglas Starr (Michael Moriarty), who had raised her since Emily's mother died seven years earlier. To help her write that script, Matthews met with a Toronto counselling group for children who had lost their parents. One girl told her how she would put her father's sweater on backwards and wrap it around her as if he was still there to hug her. In the episode, Emily does exactly the same thing; she also keeps the sweater with her for the rest of the series.

Actress Sheila McCarthy, who plays Emily's Aunt Laura, agrees that the show is a marked departure from the more upbeat Avonlea series. But she thinks viewers who tune in at 7 p.m. on Sunday nights--the traditional Avonlea time slot--should not be overly shocked by the contrast "Yes, it's really scary in the beginning," said McCarthy during a recent interview on the set of Emily, "but children love that. I think we're far too politically correct with our children these days. I mean, what do I remember from my childhood? Running out of the room when the Wicked Witch of the West came on--and loving it."

For the 41-year~old McCarthy, who is well-known for earlier work in both film (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing) and television (Picket Fences), the series has become something of a family affair. With the shooting schedule taking her away from her Stratford, Ont., home for six months at a stretch, McCarthy brought her daughters, Mackenzie, 10, and four-year-old Drew, to live with her on Prince Edward Island. Both girls now have small parts in the series. Meanwhile, McCarthy's husband, Peter Donaldson, a highly regarded stage and film actor who won a Genie for last year's Long Day's Journey into Night, has been commuting between acting gigs in Stratford and Summerside. In Emily, Donaldson plays Ian Bowles, an urbane hotelier who is smitten by the shy, emotionally repressed Aunt Laura.

McCarthy, who has spent much of her recent professional life shuttling between Stratford, Toronto and Los Angeles, finds the quieter pace of Island life a welcome respite. On most days, she is able to take her children to and from school; if she is detained, the girls are brought to the set where they hang out with the cast and crew. "It's a rare thing that I get to be Mom and also get my rocks off as an actor" says McCarthy. "I just get a real sense of being where I should be. It's pretty cool."

Ironically, McCarthy began her career at the age of 16 as a dancer in the musical Anne of Green Gables at the annual Charlottetown Festival. As a former teen performer, she is somewhat in awe of her young co-star. "Martha is a total natural," she enthuses. "She can go from blabbering away with the crew to crying on cue in a minute. Whereas I have to be in a dark corner for an hour concentrating on my part."

MacIsaac, so self-assured on the set, is still shy when dealing with the media. During a recent session with Maclean's, she asked Matthews to sit beside her; then held on tightly to the producer's hand for the rest of the interview. The youngest in a family of four girls, MacIsaac says she has been acting, in a fashion, all her life. "I was a show-off since I was little," she explains. But after working with such experienced co-stars as McCarthy, John Neville and Susan Clark, MacIsaac is now certain of her career choice. "Acting is what I definitely want to do," she says. "Forever." With Emily of New Moon, she has been given the kind of launchpad any Canadian actor would envy.

BRIAN BERGMAN in Summerside

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