Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
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by Sarah Thorpe, directed by Sarah Thorpe & Scott Dermody
Soup Can Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, Toronto
November 12-22, 2015
“If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me” (Joan of Arc, 1431)
Sarah Thorpe’s solo play Heretic, that premiered earlier this year, returns in an expanded version in a new production and for a longer run. This is good news since Thorpe’s retelling of the story of Joan of Arc makes this iconic figure, already the subject of numerous plays and films, seem fresh and new. One major reason is the absolute simplicity of the production. Another is the winning naturalness of Thorpe’s acting. The play also makes clear how a young woman made a saint by the Catholic Church in 1920 could have been viewed as a supreme danger by the same church in 1431.
The action begins with Thorpe as Joan at a prie-dieu. We think she must be at a chapel, but a recorded voice (also Thorpe) tells Joan that most people “here” pray for mercy. Joan doesn’t understand because she’s done nothing wrong, and the voice’s statement makes us wonder where “here” is supposed to be. To prove to the voice that she has done nothing wrong, Joan acts out her story from when she first saw and heard three saints in 1425 when she was 13 who commanded her to save France, all through her battle, her imprisonment and trial through her death by burning at the stake in 1431 when she was 19. From this we have to conclude that “here’ is one of the various antechambers to the afterlife.
This conceit allows Thorpe’s Joan to speak to us in a very modern way and to put events in an historical context that she would likely not have seen while she was in the midst of living them. Joan explains how she was born in the midst of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between England and France for rule over France. Complicating the issue is that places we now think of a French, such as Burgundy and Brittany, were fighting on the side of England. The war had gone on so long that most people, such as Joan’s parents, knew nothing else. One of the principal virtues of Joan’s heroism was to galvanize a populace grown weary of war and to inspire it with patriotism.
Thorpe takes us through the most familiar parts of Joan’s life – her convincing of Robert de Baudricourt to believe in her and her cause, her leading an army despite no military experience into battle, her wearing of men’s clothing and armour, her triumph of capturing Orléans and her having Charles VII crowned as King of France at Reims in 1429.
What followed is a portion of the story often omitted. Joan wants to keep fighting to drive the English completely out of France, whereas the powers she has just helped want to negotiate with the English, feeling that Joan has accomplished her goals and that she is no longer needed. When a truce with the English ended, she pressed on to fight but was captured by the Burgundians in 1430 who then sold her to the English for 10,000 livres. In Rouen she was put on trial for heresy in an ecclesiastical court of English and Burgundians under Bishop Cauchon.
Thorpe has Joan make clear quite simply why a young woman like her posed such a threat. The nominal reason was that she dressed in male attire, but this was suggested to her by Baudricourt as the most efficient way to dress to fight. Also such attire would help frustrate attempts at rape. Joan, illiterate, signed an abjuration under threat of execution and was given female garb to wear. Her changing back into male garb, a relapse in to heresy punishable by death, is thought to have been arranged in various ways. Thorpe chooses the theory that the soldiers stole her dress forcing her to wear her male attire again.
Yet, Thorpe has Joan mentions aspects of what she accomplished that shook both secular and ecclesiastical norms. The notion that saints spoke directly to her, a lowly peasant girl, flouts the need for the whole hierarchy of the church as the official mediators between God and men. The notion that a young woman could actually command an army and lead it into victory flouts the whole notion of the submissive role of women, of their frailty and the limits of their abilities.
Thorpe never turns her re-enacting of Joan’s story into a lecture, but merely comments in passing on what Joan thinks must have upset people so much at the time. Thorpe presents Joan as a young woman completely without pretence. She is given a divine commission, wonders why she of all people should be chosen, yet also feels the overwhelming duty to accomplish the task that God has given her. All the norms of church and society that she breaks are simply done in trying to fulfil her divine mission. Thorpe shows us Joan is a human being, capable of fear and doubt, but she also shows us Joan is illuminated from within by her goal.
In re-enacting the story, Thorpe takes on more than a dozen different voices, male and female, some pre-recorded but mostly not. She plays Joan’s father as harsh and narrow-minded, she gives Baudricourt a Quebecois accent and plays Charles and his wife Marie of Anjou as if they are frivolous courtiers unworthy of the honour Joan will bestow upon them. Thorpe even gives a sympathetic portrait of Joan’s executioner who is stricken with remorse for carrying out such gruesome orders meant to eliminate any trace that Joan existed.
Lighting designer Randy Lee and sound designer Wesley McKenzie combine forces to create the magical effect of Joan’s first vision. Lee makes imaginative use of warmth and coldness of light to reflect Joan’s mood and of squares of light diminishing in size and brightness to portray her inevitable defeat at her trial.
The play must be set immediately after Joan’s death because there is no mention of Joan’s posthumous retrial in 1456, instigated by Joan’s mother and the Inquisitor-General, that found her completely innocent of all charges. And, unlike the epilogue to George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (1923) there is no mention of Joan’s later beatification and canonization. Thorpe’s Joan dies alone and bewildered by what has happened.
There are some minor peculiarities about the production. The French of the 15th century should really not march to the Marseillaise since that music was not written until 1792. Joan should also not depict the English with a Union Jack since England and Scotland were on opposite sides in the Hundred Years War and because the flag was not adopted until 1801. Thorpe should also decide to pronounce Reims either the English way or the French instead of neither.
Otherwise, Thorpe gives an eloquent performance that ranges from enacting energetic battles that range throughout the entire theatre to solemn reflection on whether she is really guilty of pride and why men should suddenly be so cruel. It’s quite a journey for a play only 70 minutes long, but you will leave feeling that you know this important figure better than you ever have before.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: Sarah Thorpe as Joan of Arc. ©2015 Laura Dittman.
For tickets, visit www.artsboxoffice.ca.
2015-11-12
Heretic