Saint Joan as George Bernard Shaw envisioned was a true genius amongst the people, and this great production by Flyleaf Theatre Company reveals this.
Director: Grace Augustine. Producer: Charlie Underhill
First performed in 1923, Shaw published this five years after the armistice of the Great War.
Shaw was a committed socialist. He was a prolific writer of drama, and he helped support himself prior by writing music criticism. He was a Fabian society member, and he helped found the London School of Economics.
Strong on his lifelong ambition to break through the British class system and to elevate what was to become the middle class. That which Marx failed to foresee in his Das Kapital.
The drama has rarely been performed in New Zealand. The previous production was in the mid Fifties. It is regarded as one of Shaw’s masterworks, and he received the Nobel Prize for Literature two years later.
This version has been edited down and abridged to fit a racy and succinct 90-minute running time (no interval).
In the Loft theatre, we are up close to the action. The set design (Aaron Richardson) includes a pile of driftwood strung up with fairy lights which light up at the appropriate time to simulate fire.
Joan D’Arc (Bronwyn Ensor) is a 17-year-old French rustic farmgirl who first pitches up to the gates of nobleman Robert De Baudricourt (Richardson), insisting she has visions telling her to lead the fight against the occupying English.
Set over two years, 1429 to 1431, in the latter stages of the Hundred Year War between the English and the French.
Since the victory of William the Conqueror in England, the subsequent nobility claimed vast swathes of land on the continent.
This peasant woman dresses as a man, has the incredible urge to fight, and has a special charisma to inspire men around her to join her in combat.
She seems a little mad and butch, but De Baudricourt is won over when the barren hens of the manor suddenly produce an avalanche of eggs.
Her mission is to inspire the Dauphin (Dylan Underwood) to take up his rightful crown, even though he is an obsequious pandering and preening fop.
But Joan is inspirational in leading men to battle, being impervious to physical injury herself.
Her successes lead to the crucial trial of whether this is the force of good or evil. She is examined in court on the grounds she may be a witch.
So, burn her! The Monty Python Greek Chorus pipes up.
The archbishop (Mustaq Missouri) is the Catholic presence of heavy power. Her voices of God are a blasphemous usurping of the church’s ultimate power.
The Chaplin (Joseph Wycoff) sees her as a common criminal for taking a horse without permission.
Cauchon (Justin Benn) is desperate to find a motivation in Joan that can exonerate her from the Executioner (Mauritz Badenhorst).
Tension and suspense are coiled up like a spring ready to lash, as the director Grace Augustine excels in the pacing.
Joan finds the reprieve she craves from the court, but the price is worse than death.
And now I know how Joan of Arc felt/ As the flames rose to the Roman nose/ And the Walkman started to melt. (Bigmouth Strikes Again, The Smiths).
Shaw did not intend this as a tragedy.
There are no villains in the piece. Crime, like disease, is not interesting. It is something to be done away with by general consent, and that is all there is about it. It is what men do at their best, with good intentions.
Considered his one true tragedy. Saint Joan comes alive with racy production and editing by the Flyleaf Theatre Company.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photo credit Jinki Cambronero
This review mentions a number of things in the play that are distortions of history, and in fact most of the play is fictional. Joan herself said that she didn’t fight but instead carried her banner in battle, confirmed by numerous eyewitness accounts. Cauchon was not trying to save her: dozens of eyewitnesses who were at the trial said he falsified the transcript and convicted her on false charges after she was manipulated by the guards into wearing “male clothing” (i.e. her military horseback-riding outfit) again after the guards took away her dress. Cauchon was an advisor for the English occupation government since 1420 and had a well-documented history of corruption and a criminal conviction in 1414. English government records show that they arranged the trial and selected the tribunal, all of whom were collaborators; and shortly after the end of the trial they issued a decree on 12 June 1431 promising to protect the tribunal from prosecution by the Pope. The trial had nothing to do with the “Church” opposing her, since she had already been approved in early April 1429 by the Inquisitor for Southern France and other prominent clergy at Poitiers before being given any role in the army, and likewise she received written support from many other clergy such as the Archbishop of Embrun, the famous theologian Jehan Gerson, Inquisitor Jehan Dupuy, and many others. Shaw’s play turned history completely upside down, but has been copied by many other plays and movies on the subject until its version has become accepted by many people in the general public.