Review of St. Joan – Urgency and Motive in Stuart Laing’s Modernist Adaptation of George Bernard Shaw | platform

WWhen George Bernard Shaw’s play was about to open at what is now the Noel Coward Theatre, a Times critic expressed concern that the playwright would use the story of Saint Joan as an excuse for political maneuvering. They wrote that Shaw “sometimes delights in criticizing the present through the past.” For this unnamed critic, the appeal of Shaw’s Fabian community ethics has diminished.

When the same writer attended The First Night in 1924, with Sybil Thorndyke in the lead role, they were relieved to find that JBS had played it right: six scenes describing the Maid of Orleans’ progress from obscure teenager to conqueror and army commander. Only in the epilogue does the playwright “let himself go” with a contemporary comment: “It is annoying that he should be so obsessed with the present moment that he drags it into every period.”

Just over a century later, director Stuart Laing may be subject to the same kind of speculation. In this raw material co-production, will Laing play with Shaw’s play in the same way he did with Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, turning James Hogg’s classic novel on its head in an elaborate trick?

As with Xu, Ling’s interest in Saint Guan turns out to be anything but ironic. His modernist reimagining of the play is much shorter and includes camera angles from Shaw’s unproduced film adaptation, but it is an honest engagement with the themes of religious conviction, ecclesiastical authority, and youthful rebellion that Joan’s story raises.

In the lead role, newcomer Mandipa Kabanda tears up the dialogue at a pace not seen since Ivo van Hove’s More Luxurious Palaces, matching the other actors in urgency and drive. That all the men wear ear pieces as if they are synchronizing their lines to the recording suggests that Joan is not the only one hearing the voices. Why should her internal monologue be less valid than theirs?

Ling stays true not only to Shaw’s serious discussions, but also to his politics, giving us an epilogue of our own. Director Adora Onashile’s closing film combines footage of modern-day protesters with images of a death-defying Kabanda calling for action: “I’d rather people remember me as the girl who started the fire.” The Times drama critic wouldn’t have approved of that, but GBS certainly would have.