Review by Jen
The story of Joan of Arc, a peasant girl spurred on by the voice of God to lead the French army against the English during the Hundred Years’ War, is a moment of history that has fascinated and inspired many since her execution in 1431. Saint Joan, the 1923 ‘chronicle play’ by George Bernard Shaw dramatises her story in a series of six scenes and an epic monologue. A famous polemicist, Shaw interestingly refuses to blame any character or institution for Joan’s execution; it is, as his biographer Michael Holroyd asserts, ‘a tragedy without villains’, a piece of theatre about natural human action, not human fault. Stewart Laing’s reimagining of Saint Joan leans more into our contemporary interpretation of Joan as a spirited young woman punished for rebelling against the early-modern patriarchal institutions that attempt to define her. It is bold, aggressive and angry, and directly ties Joan to the modern day as a patron saint of all rebellion, resistance and political activism.
The play largely maintains Shaw’s original structure, but strips the stage of any props and set, except for a large futuristic lamp which dazzles the audience, and a bright white screen which serves as a backdrop for projected film scenes. The play’s action, too, is rarely physicalised; Laing has his actors deliver stage directions as if describing a film, as scene transitions are marked with the words ‘cut to’ or ‘dissolve to’and direct references to a ‘camera’ are made throughout. It is almost Brechtian at times, as characters are named and explained as they enter the stage space. The result is a dynamic and stylised play that could be set in any time period, lending the story a timeless quality. Indeed, the entire first half of the play is delivered as more of a military mission than a piece of theatre; each actor wears a matching earpiece and cross-body bag, and they exaggeratedly synchronise their phone’s stopwatches at the beginning of the play, as if to prepare for an attack. Saint Joan does, at times, feel like an attack – the first forty minutes of the piece, which cover Joan’s role in the epic battle of Orléans (during which her divine visions ultimately save the city from falling into English hands), are delivered in a rushed and emotionally neutral style, never stopping for breath or pathos. The effect is fascinating, but not especially entertaining; choosing the surreal over the realistic every time, I felt that the play began to prioritise style over substance, as its actors’ rapid-fire delivery meant that many lines were lost and hindered the communication of the story.
At the precise halfway point of the play, this fast-paced surrealist battle sequence suddenly halts, and Saint Joan hurtles into its second act through a movement sequence to Charli XCX’s 360 remix, a transitional choice which fell a little flat. The motion of the first act is replaced with a jarring and unsettling stillness as we move into the slow and shadowy atmosphere of Joan’s heresy trial. The actors once again synchronise their devices, and it feels as if an entirely new play has begun. While the first half is all movement and no emotion, the second has moments of pure silence amidstnarration, which is delivered strikingly slowly. It is disorientating at first, but this juxtaposition allows us to experience Joan’s story with her; we are swept up in the mania of her extraordinary abilities and the hectic atmosphere of the battles she is thrust into, before deflating into the tedious and disquieting court scene which we know must lead to Joan’s execution and martyrdom. A choice which stood out to me was Joan’s costuming here – historical accounts tell us that she appeared in front of the inquisitor in men’s clothing, described in Saint Joan as a ‘page’s black suit’. What Mandipa Kabanda as Joan actually wears is more like a school blazer, and as she sits among the men onstage who, overrun with contempt for her gender transgressions and fanatical religion, must determine her fate, we are reminded that this remarkable woman was only a teenager when she was executed. It is a powerful visual, and speaks to Stewart Laing’s digression from Shaw’s nonpartisan text, as we are certainly encouraged to feel enraged by the blatant misogyny and fear of powerful women that led to Joan’s execution.
Making her professional stage debut as Joan, Mandipa Kabanda is a powerhouse. Her Joan is not in the least pathetic or even pitiable: she is unflinching, insolent and determined. This story could very easily be a tragedy, as it is interpreted by many people today, yet this interpretation does not allow us to feel pity. As the play moves into its final scene, aprojected film sequence directed by Adura Onashile, it is clear that the overwhelming feeling of the play is anger. The film shows Joan, or a posthumous version of the saint, filming an Instagram live in which she smears herself with blood, sticks feathers over her body and jumps off a high building before taking flight. This is, presumably, a nod to Joan of Arc’s attempt to escape imprisonment in 1430, miraculously surviving a jump of 20 metres into a moat before being recaptured. Onashile’s film is a fascinating interpretation of Joan’s legacy, painting her as a ghostlike figure who has remained alongside humanity following her death – indeed, Joan tells us ‘I thought death would be the end, but it’s more like a window I can’t close’. From this liminal space, she urges us to ‘act now’ and refuse to ‘wait for permission’ to stand up for what we believe, just as she did 800 years before us. It is unclear just what she is insisting we stand up for, until the film is cut with videos of marches, warzones and police brutality which link Joan explicitly to the contemporary. As she implores the viewer to ‘let [her] fight’ on their behalf, it is clear Laing and Onashile are attempting to directly link Joan to modern day activism, invoking her to speak for us now and empower us to stand against injustice around the world. For me, this explicit link felt a little clunky, and while the modern-day conflicts Saint Joan points to are urgently catastrophic and deeply important, I felt the choice to use Joan as a general mouthpiece for freedom and justice draws attention from her unique and remarkable story.
Saint Joan is theatrically intriguing, intellectually stimulating and historically fascinating, but seems to lack a moving power that prevents it from connecting with its audience and making the thematic statement it sets out to make. Nevertheless, Saint Joan is a bold, experimental and unapologetic reimagining of one of our most mysterious and revered historical women.
Saint Joan was performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, from March 18th-21st. It was co-produced by Raw Material, Perth Theatre and Aberdeen Performing Arts in association with Citizens Theatre.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
You can see what is coming soon to the Traverse Theatre by visiting their website https://www.traverse.co.uk/
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