Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (1923), adapted by
director Imara Savage and Emme Hoy for the Sydney Theatre Company (2018).
Reviewed by Ellie Crookes (Macquarie University)
George Bernard Shaw’s Nobel Prize winning play Saint Joan,
like most works of medievalism, ultimately functions as an exercise in
reception: a theoretical approach devised by Wolfgang Iser (1971, 1978) and
Hans Robert Jauss (1982), which argues that a text’s cultural value is not
simply shaped by its context of production but also by its uptake, utilisation
and adaption in later contexts. Indeed, though Saint Joan is ostensibly a play
about wars and warriors of the fifteenth century it is imbued with concerns and
preoccupations of Shaw’s own time. The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of
Saint Joan acknowledges and builds upon this aspect of Shaw’s play. It does
this by utilising artefacts of the past, in this case a medieval French story
and an early-twentieth-century British play, to shine a light on political,
social and cultural preoccupations of 2018 Australia.
Shaw goes some way to acknowledge the intersection of the
medieval past and his twentieth-century present in a retrospective essay ‘Saint
Joan: an Epilogue’, published in 1924. Here, Shaw discusses the seeming
immutability of Joan’s story in regard to English imperialism, militarism,
sectarianism, clericalism, and the ‘woman question.’ Shaw’s discussion on the
nature of womanhood, particularly his treatise in support of rebellious women,
is especially arresting, with Shaw celebrating Joan as an archetype of powerful
subversive womanhood in regard to the clothes she wears (calling her a ‘pioneer
of rational dressing[1]
for women’ p.7), and the actions she takes (he venerates her military prowess
and calls her the ‘first practitioner of Napoleonic realism in warfare’ p.7).
Furthermore, Shaw locates Joan within a long history of maverick women,
including those of his own era such as George Sand, Rosa Bonheur, and Sylvia
Pankhurst.
Shaw’s characterisation of Joan as a model of progressive
womanhood, in both his play and essay, is set against the backdrop of Joan’s
persecution. This juxtaposition forms a tension that, as expertly delineated by
Karma Waltonen in her article ‘Saint Joan: From Renaissance Witch to New
Woman,’ aims to ‘showcase a picture of the modern woman caught in a patriarchal
society—a woman labelled a witch because she violated the rules of an
oppressive sex-gender system’ (2004, 196). Shaw’s ultimate aim seems to have
been to position Joan as the personification of ‘modern’ womanhood and as a
figure of progressivity within a comparatively antiquated world. This
comparison was done, I contend, to align Joan’s ‘backwards’ medieval era with Shaw’s
understanding of the regressive notions, especially in regard to womanhood, that
were pervasive in his own time and which he openly denigrated.[2]
The Sydney Theatre Company’s 2018 adaptation of Shaw’s play
takes up the mantle set down by Shaw of utilising art and stories of the past
as a means to put forth progressive, contemporary commentary. The STC’s
adaptation of the play, however, takes this focus on reception a step further
by having the ‘medievalness’ of Shaw’s play take a back seat to its potential
for universality. In respect to this, the STC erases almost all physical
reference to the Middle Ages, a directorial decision that sits in direct
contrast to Shaw’s original production, which sought to recreate the medieval
past on stage through costume, scenery and props[3].
The only exception to this rule of underplaying ‘medievalness’ is the STC’s
inclusion of a tableau of Joan (played by Sarah Snook) in silver armour at the
beginning of the play, which serves as a nod to the medievalness of the action
about to take place. The armour is then removed after the first Act and whisked
off stage, which works as a powerful symbol of the play being stripped of its
medieval context. From this point forward the play is set in a minimalist space
of no discernable time or place. The actors wear vaguely ‘modern’ clothing,
with Joan garbed throughout in the uniform of teenagers (a tee-shirt and
shorts) and the stage is for the most part almost completely bare of props. One
of the only props used is a petrol can, introduced in the final scene. The can
is filled with iridescent silver paint that Joan pours over herself, mimicking
a modern image of martyrdom, that of religious devotees performing
self-immolation.
The absence of the visually ‘medieval’ in the STC’s
production is, I contend, thoughtful and deliberate and not just a product of
the popularity of minimalist productions in modern Australian theatre. In the
case of this production of Saint Joan the stark stage functions as a blank
canvas, inviting connections to be made between what is happening in the play
and what is occurring in the audience’s world. Furthermore, what is happening
in 2018 is quite strikingly relevant to the concerns of Shaw’s
twentieth-century play about a fifteenth-century woman.
Religiosity is one such issue. Religion is, of course, integral
to the medieval story of Joan, and is also central to Shaw’s play, where it is
positioned as inherently dichotomous, as something to be simultaneously revered
and reviled. The religious piety and resoluteness of Joan is venerated by Shaw,
while the hypocrisy and corruption of the Church that seeks to condemn her is
criticised. Shaw was raised a Protestant, a fact that he directly references in
his essay on Joan, and this most certainly had an impact on his version of
Joan’s story. Indeed, Shaw paints a particularly scathing picture of the
medieval Church, which ostensibly stands in for his modern Catholic Church.
Due to certain recent scandals within the Australian
Catholic Church and other religious organisations, a level of mistrust for
organised religion resonates particularly strongly with Australian audiences in
2018. The STC’s production acknowledges this relevance by leaning into the
parts of Shaw’s dialogue that critique the deceptiveness and duplicity of
Joan’s clerical accusers. Most noticeably, the ‘Bishops’ at times all but wink
at the audience in complicit mockery of their spiteful and devious actions and
arguments.
This undercurrent of religious critique within the STC’s
Saint Joan came to a conspicuous head during a ‘question hour’ held with the
actors after the production that I attended. At one point, an audience member
asked the players about the reaction of the Australian Catholic Church[4]
to such an unflattering depiction. Acclaimed Australian actor John Garden
(playing the roles of Inquisitor and Archbishop) responded that the STC hadn’t
received any kind of response from the Church, but that this wasn’t surprising
considering that “they (the Church) are quite busy with other things.” This
remark, which was met with snickers from the audience, was unquestionably in
reference to the ongoing Royal Commission into child sex abuse and alleged
cover-ups by members of the Australian Catholic Church and others, and this
interaction drove home the relevance of Shaw’s play to such a potent atmosphere
of religious scepticism and suspicion in Australia at this moment.
The issue of Nationalism, specifically Joan’s fight for
French deliverance from English invasion, is also central to Shaw’s Saint Joan.
This is so, even though the historical Joan of Arc lived before modern
conceptions of nationhood, with her fight being over feudal lands not nation
states. Shaw acknowledges this anachronism in his essay, but he clearly saw the
potential for Joan’s story to work as a facsimile for modern Irish/British
tensions, particularly the issue of Home Rule. Shaw, an Irishman himself, was
sympathetic to the Irish plight and this empathy for a nation occupied by
English/British sovereignty is ever-present in Saint Joan.
Saint Joan’s’ focus on nationalism is certainly relevant
today, internationally with Brexit and Trump’s border wall, and in Australia
where we have a policy of ‘turning back the boats’ of asylum seekers, and
imprisoning refugees offshore for indiscriminate amounts of time. The way that
the STC responds to this issue, however, is rather to hide from it instead of
examining it, as it did religiosity.
Nationalistic politics are justifiably controversial and as
such the STC, whose overall aim for the play is seemingly to present Joan as
modern feminist role model (more on this later), needed to manipulate the
nationalistic message of Shaw’s play. Thus, the STC production strives to make
plain the difference between Joan’s nationalism as a reasonable reaction to
invasion, and the less justifiable nationalistic impulse of isolationism. The
2018 production achieves this distinction through the alteration and sometimes
complete exclusion of some of the more controversial nationalistic portions of
Shaw’s original play, most notably the omission of the line:
JOAN: ‘He (God) gave them (England)
their own country and their own language and it is not His will they should
come into our country and try to speak our language’ (Act I).
By removing sections such as this, the STC dulls the edges
of what in 2018 could rightfully be perceived as overt xenophobia. This
directorial decision was undoubtedly made so as to make the play more palatable
to modern Australian audiences, though of course Shaw’s original isolationist
sentiment would certainly ring true of current Australian immigration policies.
As such, perhaps a different production of the play could have combatted this
issue of nationalism as it is presented by Shaw head on, instead of hiding from
it. However, this would have made for a very different play.
It is easy to understand why the play moderates the
nationalistic elements of Shaw’s rendering of Joan’s story, as this would have
complicated the self-professed (by both the artistic director Kip Williams and
the director Imara Savage) ‘main message’ of the production: to present a powerful
female role model for modern Australian audiences. Obviously, overt xenophobia
on the part of the heroine would have complicated matters. Savage, in her
director’s notes, suggests that her desire to direct Saint Joan stemmed from
the play’s relevance to recent feminist movements, particularly #metoo[5],
and to the rise of powerful and passionate young female visionaries like Malala
Yousafzai, Pussy Riot and Emma Gonzalez. The STC’s assertion, in their
advertising materials and in their production program, seems to be that Shaw’s
Saint Joan is an effective vehicle with which to speak to the struggles and triumphs
of these young women and to show the universality of this type of womanhood in
the present day.
This claim of female empowerment as a defining factor behind
the STC’s choice to produce this play is commendable but it is, in both
intention and execution, not fully realised. The STC’s goal of producing Shaw’s
play as a means to celebrate Joan as a powerful and progressive role model is
complicated by the fact that Joan, in Shaw’s original version of the play, has
very little stage time. Savage, in her notes, acknowledges this and states that
Shaw’s play feels like it shows Joan performing ‘a cameo in her own life
story.’ Indeed, in the original three-hour version of the play Joan is only
onstage for one quarter of the time, with most of the action occurring through
descriptions by men, of Joan and her exploits. This absence of Joan from her own
story is rectified somewhat by Savage’s restaging of the play, where Joan (and indeed
all of the actors) are onstage throughout the production. Furthermore, and perhaps
most effectively, is the inclusion of new dialogue in the form of soliloquies performed
by Joan, which the director along with writer Emme Hoy fashioned from Joan’s
historical Condemnation and Rehabilitation trial documents.[6]
These changes centralise Joan within her own story through the very practical
fact that she is given more lines, and the writer/director team cleverly
include new sections which give more insight into the psyche and motivations of
Joan. These new additions flesh out Joan’s character so that the play is less a
retelling of Joan’s impact on the lives of kings and soldiers, and more of a
story of personal angst and bravery.
These changes are effective and commendable but Savage’s and
the STC’s claim to have chosen the play in reaction to an international
atmosphere of powerful women and the #metoo movement is still complicated by
the fact that the it had to be so heavily edited that at times it bears little
resemblance to the original.[7]
Furthermore, Saint Joan is still a play that calls for one
female actor to be surrounded by a troupe of fourteen men.[8]
On the one hand, the image of a woman enclosed by a circle of men, which is how
the staging is set for most of STC’s production, is powerful in its
representative potential for depictions of gendered inequality, and also for its
illustration of Joan as a powerful, impressive figure in the face of this
imbalance. However, the presence of only one woman onstage for the entire
retelling of Joan’s story also plays into the rather pernicious idea, often associated
with the valorisation of Joan of Arc, of female exceptionalism. Arianne Chernock
(2013), Mary D. Sheriff (1996, 2003) and Jane Tolmie (2006) have all examined
the matter of female exceptionality in detail, in both visual art and in written
works, and assert that though idealised women are often used as inspirational
models, they are also utilised (intentionally or inadvertently) as a means to
make a mockery of the majority of women who do not transcend the limitations of
their gender or their circumstances. The total absence of any other female character/actor
onstage besides Joan feels like a validation, though undoubtedly unintentional,
of this notion of female exceptionality, and this complicates the STC’s claims
of progressive, feminist intent behind their production.
The biggest takeaway for me from the Sydney Theatre
Company’s production of Saint Joan is a fresh appreciation for just how
malleable works of medievalism are, and how far they can be stretched from
their original forms whilst still retaining the essence of their medievalist
roots. This fact is a testament to the powerful impact of the Middle Ages on
the modern world, and also to the inextricability of modern ideas and concerns
from our renderings of the medieval past.
Works cited
Chernock, A. (2013). "Gender and the Politics of
Exceptionalism in the Writing of British Women's Histories." Making Women's
Histories. P. S. Nadell and K. Haulman. New York, NYU Press.
Iser, W. (1971). "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in
Prose Fiction." Aspects of Narrative: Selected Papers from the English
Institute. J. H. Miller. New York.
Iser, W. (1978). The Act of Reading: a theory of aesthetic
response. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Jauss, H. R. and T. Bahti (1982). Toward an Aesthetic of
Reception. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Shaw, G. B. (1962). Platform and Puplit. London, Rupert
Hart-Davis.
Shaw, G. B. (1962). Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes
and an Epilogue. Middlesex, New York, London, Penguin Books.
Sheriff, M. D. (1996). The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth
Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art. Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press.
Sheriff, M. D. (2003). "'So what are you working
on?': Categorising the Exceptional Woman." Singular Women: Writing the
Artists. K. Frederickson and S. E. Webb. Berkeley, University of California
Press.
Tolmie, J. (2006). "Medievalism and the Fantasy
Heroine." Journal of Gender Studies 15(2): 145–158.
Waltonen, K. (2004). "Saint Joan: From Renaissance
Witch to New Woman." SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 24(1):
186-203.
Ellie Crookes
Macquarie University
[1]
Rational Dress, also known as ‘Victorian Dress
Reform,’ was a movement of the late nineteenth century that called for ‘healthier’ and
‘safer’ styles of dress for women, in reaction to the corseted and cushioned designs that were popular
at the time.
[2] As
demonstrated in his pro-feminist writings, such as his speeches: ‘The Menace of
the Leisured
Woman’ (1927) and ‘Women-Man in Petticoats’ (1927).
[3] A
number of photographs from early twentieth-century productions of the play can
be found online, particularly of the actress Sybil Thorndike who
performed in the role of Joan over 450 times. These images attest to the visually ‘medieval’ flavour of the
original productions.
[4] It
is quite telling that this audience member named the Catholic Church specifically,
not Christianity or religious organisations more generally.
[5] It
is interesting to note that one of the accused predators ousted by the #metoo
movement was the
actor Geoffrey Rush, whose alleged misbehavior while
performing in the STC’s production of King
Lear in the 2015-2016 season was the catalyst for his
public reprobation. Thus, Savage’s reference to
the movement feels quite pointed.
[6] This
directorial decision, according to Savage, was enabled by somewhat lax
Australian copyright
laws, which allow Australian productions of plays to be
hugely altered by modern writers and
directors.
[7] A
fact that Shaw would have reviled, having in his essay on Saint Joan professed
that critics (whom he calls ‘knights of the blue pencil’) that suggest
that the script be shortened, never mind
substantially altered, are effectively ‘disemboweling’
his play.
[8] The
STC’s production, however, has its actors play two and even three roles,
bringing their number of male actors down to eight.
