The segues between excerpts need to hold the piece together and provide an arc or argument. Attempts to link them thematically – blood, guilt – felt underdeveloped and tenuous. Fleshing these out has potential for a more rewarding piece.
The mood lightened in the latter part of the show as performers delivered a stocktake of how Shakespeare killed off his characters – blades, dagger and swords being the most common and eating hot coals the least (Julius Caesar).
Fight director Nigel Poulton provided insights into how changing Elizabethan styles of fencing impacted Romeo and Juliet. His cameo was as fascinating as it was unexpected.
With six actors playing numerous roles, Lucy Bell, Jessica Tovey and Darius Williams were particularly strong.
Max Lyandvert’s subtle sound design provided moments of tension and unease as well as lyrical beauty. Anna Tregloan’s casual street clothes in a neutral palette aided the informality.
This taster-plate of a show attempts to present the Bard in a different way. Sadly, the production felt unsatisfying in its execution.
VOICES OF JOAN
PACT Theatre, September 4
Until September 14
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½
The title is metaphorical. It does not refer to the voices Joan of Arc believed came to her from her god, but to the multifarious ways her bold stance against a cruel and morally bankrupt patriarchy rattled the bones of history.
Janie Gibson hurls herself into endless costume changes.Credit: Lee Illfield
Although not the first feminist, she has as strong a claim as any to being the most extraordinary human of us all, being illiterate, teenaged, female and agrarian, and yet winning the ear of the highest echelons of state and church, bearing arms and trouncing a seemingly invincible foe.
If there’s such a thing as megaphone theatre, this is it – complete with megaphone.
Voices of Joan was devised by Janie Gibson and Anu Almagro, with Gibson the lone actor and Almagro directing. Lithe, brash and daring, it describes itself as “a feminist punk ritual unravelling the history of misogyny through a radical retelling of the story of Joan of Arc”. Box ticked! If there’s such a thing as megaphone theatre, this is it – complete with megaphone.
Gibson hurls herself into endless costume changes, variously emerging as herself, Joan, a corrupt judge and Heinrich Kramer, the author of Malleus Maleficarum, which, half a century after Joan was incinerated, formalised the practice of burning women alive.
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This is black-box theatre with a few lights (Fausto Brusamolino), skerricks of music (Liesl Pieterse), a rack of costumes and elements of audience participation that culminate in a theatrical image to shake your soul.
Along the way come undergraduate moments and wavering intensity. We hear the voices of, or are given quotes by, Alan Jones and Donald Trump, while the text, like Shaw’s Saint Joan, draws extensively on the transcript of Joan’s trial.
The play’s dramaturgical sins are easily forgiven: they can happen when you take this many risks. Where it falters is metaphysically. Shaw, ever the sceptic, dismissed the voices, so his play ends up sitting uncomfortably on a rather precipitous fence.
Joan may or may not have suffered some malady of the mind, but these voices were so real to her that she convinced others to let her wear armour, ride a warhorse, devise battleground tactics and longer-term strategies, lead troops into action and win: inconceivable actions for one of her age, class and sex.
Even if the show’s creators struggle to give credence to the interlocutory powers of her angels and saints, they could have let Joan believe in them more – so she could also doubt.