>>REVIEW
SAINT JOAN
Theatre Calgary
Runs until February 18
Max Bell Theatre
(Epcor Centre)
It’s interesting to note that, before he wrote Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw had considered writing a play about the prophet Muhammad. Interesting, because right now the obvious comparison that occurs when you think about Joan of Arc, the religious-fanatic warrior who inspired the French to drive the English invaders from their soil, is with the Islamic-based Hamas, equally popular rebels (as the recent Palestinian elections attest) who have already produced plenty of young "martyrs" à la Joan.
Ah, yes, you say, but Joan wasn’t a terrorist. True – but maybe that’s only because France already had an army for her to use.
It might’ve been gutsy had Neil Munro suggested such a similarity in his new production of Shaw’s play at Theatre Calgary. But "gutsy" isn’t a word we associate with Theatre Calgary, and the celebrated director’s lively but largely unadventurous revival is content to merely put a superficial contemporary filter over that early-20th-century lens through which Shaw already views this slice of medieval history.
Shaw self-admittedly didn’t do tragedy very well and the primary virtue of this popular but overrated play is his ironic, intellectual approach to the story of Joan, which deliberately de-romanticizes her. His maid of Orleans may be guided by voices, but she isn’t swoony and mystical – she’s a clear-eyed, almost frighteningly determined young woman, plain-spoken and pragmatic, who knows what’s got to be done and is champing at the bit to do it. There’s plenty of Shavian humour early on, as she cuts through the guff of the dithering male authorities and insists on having her own headstrong way. She’s on a mission from God, dammit – can’t they see that?
However, the strongest section of Saint Joan is the trial scene, which draws upon the original court transcripts. Here, Shaw is able to successfully sound a tragic note beneath the bickering absurdities of the ecclesiastical court – a bunch of hypocrites, Pilates and Judases forced, for political reasons, to try as a heretic one of the future saints of their own church. (But if you really want to taste the horror of corrupt old priests sentencing a scared and troubled teenager to be burnt at the stake, look to Carl Dreyer’s riveting silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, screened last month at the Mutton Busting festival – a work also based on the trial records and released just a few years after Shaw’s play made its 1924 debut.)
The trial is also the highlight of Munro’s version, with some first-rate performances – notably from Philip Warren Sarsons as a lean, ascetic inquisitor, suavely explaining the insidiousness of heresy (he might’ve stepped out of one of Luis Buñuel’s anti-Catholic satires); Peter Hutt as a prickly, exasperated Bishop Cauchon; and Guy Bannerman as the distraught and guilt-ridden old Chaplain de Stogumber. Indeed, there are plenty of flavourful portrayals in the 14-member cast, including a likably level-headed Noel Johansen as Joan’s military mentor, the poetry-writing Dunois, and a small, scruffy, comically spineless David Trimble as the weakling Dauphin.
However, I failed to be moved, or even much interested, in Diana Donnelly’s dully brazen Joan. Donnelly certainly has stage presence in spades, but her performance lacks personality. Early on, she just comes off like an aggressively optimistic hockey captain itching to lead her team into the playoffs – Joan of Arc as Hayley Wickenheiser. Later, neither her breakdown at the trial nor her witty bemusement during Shaw’s clunky epilogue are particularly convincing.
Munro’s reputation as one of Canada’s top directors precedes him – as well as his rep for eccentric staging choices. Where in the past he’s been known to have actors deliver their lines with their backs to the audience, here he has fun with set designer Peter Hartwell’s many banners and backdrops, letting the actors wander behind them and continue speaking out of sight. But that mischievous spirit seems at odds with the old-fashioned symbolism he reverts to now and again, as a silent little shepherd girl, suggesting the young Joan, appears cradling a lamb. It’s that kind of sentimental Christian imagery that Shaw’s anti-romantic attitude was supposed to dispel. And if Joan, who led men into bloody battle, was ultimately a sacrificial lamb to the powers that be, she was certainly a bellicose one. |
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