Shaw's feminist icon is brought to life by the opportunists who surround her
Saint Joan
Olivier Theatre, London SE1
Joan of Arc, as every schoolchild knows, was burned at the stake. And there is a pile of wooden chairs on stage at the start of Marianne Elliott's production of Saint Joan, prefiguring the bonfire on which the 15th-century French heroine is torched.
Yet this production, with Anne-Marie Duff as a feisty Joan, says a great deal more about its author, George Bernard Shaw, than about the peasant girl who helped rout the English.
The play kicks off with Joan persuading the French establishment to take her seriously. A country maid from Domremy in Lorraine, she takes on first the aristocracy, then the Catholic Church, then the French crown. One by one, the suspicious (male) bastions of power fall in her thrall. To this end, she is conveniently aided by various miracles: the arrival of eggs to previously barren hens and, most notably, the wind direction outside Orléans, which allows the French army to repulse the English foe. There is an awful lot of time given to Joan attempting to convince everyone that she is a conduit to God and that her way is the right one. Duff certainly plays the role with conviction, albeit with a distracting Irish accent, and marches around the French aristos with impunity.
However, as an iconoclastic heroine, she is more a mouthpiece for Shavian politics than for anything medieval. A vegetarian "feminist" who supported female suffrage, Shaw had clearly found his perfect woman in Joan of Arc. The Maid of Orléans, who cut her hair short, insisted on wearing men's clothes and called herself a soldier, was a fabulously modern character, though she was born in 1412. "Women dream of love and money," she says dismissively at one point. One can almost imagine Emmeline Pankhurst (or, indeed, Margaret Thatcher) saying something along similar lines.
Written in 1923, the play seems like a clarion call for contented nationalism. Countries ought to attend to their own borders and stay within them. The play makes much of the need for France to be ruled by Francophones and for the English-speaking English to go back to Blighty. (French was then still the language used by the English court, but this is conveniently overlooked.)
Shaw's Catholic medieval saint strides around, demonstrating a political sensibility informed not by Gothic superstition and miracles, but 20th-century Protestantism, nationalism and democracy. Presumably this is why Elliott and the designer, Rae Smith, have veered away from wimples and pointed shoes and opted for drab, early 20th-century military suits, accessorised by First World War tin hats.
The heart of this production lies not with the modernity of its medieval star, but with the men whom she handbags. Fanatics, however sincere and godly, are in the end rather dull, and bar a last-ditch attempt to save herself, Joan is singing from the same hymn sheet for the entire three hours.
Pragmatists who bow to the pressures of the real world, however, are far more engaging, and here the production triumphs. Elliott is the mistress of delineating characters who vacillate, and she has a magnificent cast of flexible opportunists. They'll support Joan, but only when the wind is blowing their way.
The Dauphin (Paul Ready), a portrait of petulance in a velvet dressing gown, bangs on about "the Blood Royal" but, in the end, almost can't be bothered to be crowned king, while "the most artful fox", the Archbishop of Reims (James Hayes), is a wily old politician who believes in miracles only as long as they are useful for the main game. The English, represented by the suave Earl of Warwick (Angus Wright), aren't much better. "Well, you do burn people occasionally," he says hopefully to the Bishop of Beauvais, discussing how and when to dispose of Joan.
But it is the Inquisitor, beautifully played by Oliver Ford Davies at his most beatifically troubled, who soars above an already impressive company. Hands wringing, brow furrowed like a weary headmaster, he arrives clad in a set of tremendous robes, and ruthlessly condemns Joan in a mournful whisper that fills the entire auditorium. One almost expects him to tell her that the barbecue option will hurt him more than it will hurt her. Still, she is the one who ends up a saint, which is a victory of sorts.
For further info and booking details visit http://www.nationaltheatre.com
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