ST JOAN. To 25 September.
London
SAINT JOAN
by George Bernard Shaw.
Olivier Theatre In rep to 25 September 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 22,25 Sept. 2pm.
Captioned 20 Sept.
Runs 3hr 15min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7452 3000.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 September.
Better a dead saint than a living trouble-maker?
Director Marianne Elliott tries to save Shaw from himself. The abstract revolving platform designer Rae Smith provides, the folksified, emotion-hiked multi-cultural medievalism of Jocelyn Pook’s score, the often subdued lighting by Paule Constable, together with the dark-clad ensemble who slowly sway forward at the start, all work against the jokey, yolky elements with which Shaw puts the “play” in playwright.
Yolks are crucial at the opening. Not for Elliott a comically self-important local administrator; Brendan Hea’s de Baudricourt is seriously angry his prize hens won’t lay. His eggless breakfast-tray (trays and crockery are a repeated modern anachronism) represents Joan’s first disturbance of customary ways.
Elliott’s movement-inserts, including theatrically fashionable chair-bashing, both emphasise this disturbance and, later, signify battle. They also take up time, while Shaw’s latter-day Epilogue is torn to tatters. Though its central point survives: institutions will do anything for Joan, so long as she stays dead and doesn’t trouble them.
Amidst the crowds and fury the reason for this is made in a quiet, finely played central scene. Elliott’s approach works well in Michael Thomas’s de Stogumber, the kind of very English buffoon Shaw loved lampooning. Here, a menace sticks to the character, while Paterson Joseph’s wily-eyed Cauchon constantly weighs others up.
But the scene’s dominated by Angus Wright’s superb Warwick. Dignified, smooth, an unruffled negotiator, he defines the danger Joan represents, the person-to-deity relation that cuts out the church as middle-man (Joan apart, this is an entirely male play). And which leads to national consciousness. The concentrated, clearly-directed detail with which this underlying idea’s expounded justifies Elliott’s production more than the overt theatricality around.
Anne-Marie Duff’s Joan is suitably intense within this context, having an aptly direct manner, if little of a country-girl’s joy in life. Yet she handles the hymn to freedom well, knocking on the Executioner’s chest as she starts her “Light your fires”. But it seems an externally observed, rather than lived-amongst nature she admires.
This St Joan valuably challenges Shaw’s script, and is insightful in its handling of the individual’s threat to established order, without fully absorbing its own very obvious theatrical mannerisms.
Robert de Baudricourt: Brendan O’Hea.
Stewards/Pages: Luke Treadaway.
Joan: Anne-Marie Duff.
Bertrand de Poulengey: Ross Waiton.
Duke de la Tremouille: James Barriscale.
Archbishop of Rheims: James Hayes.
Gilles de Rais: Gareth Kennerley.
Captain La Hire: Finn Caldwell.
Charles: Paul Ready.
Dunois: Christopher Colquhoun.
Richard, Earl of Warwick: Angus Wright.
Chaplain de Stogumber: Michael Thomas.
Peter Cauchon: Paterson Joseph.
The Inquisitor: Oliver Ford Davies.
Canon John D’Estivet: William Osborne.
Canon de Courcelles: Simon Bubb.
Brother Martin Ladvenu: Jamie Ballard.
Executioner: Jonathan Jaynes.
Ensemble: Michael Camp/Eke Chokwu/Simon Markey/David Ricardo-Pearce.
Director: Marianne Elliott.
Designer: Rae Smith.
Lighting: Paule Constable.
Sound: Paul Arditti.
Music: Jocelyn Pook.
Music Director: Harvey Brough.
Choreographer: Hofesh Shechter.
Company voice work: Jeannette Nelson
Textual adviser: Samuel Adamson.
2007-09-14 00:14:21