Joan Again

Apparently there were at least four imposters who claimed to be a ‘resurrected’ Joan of Arc in the twenty years after her fiery execution. In this play, Paul Gilchrist has imagined yet another ‘appearance’ in an impoverished little French village where a family struggles to survive raising ducks to provide feathers for pillows. Theirs is a thankless existence broken only by the stories that some of them weave.

The set, their humble home, designed by Rachel Scane is stark and bland. Hessian and calico covered flats and a bale of straw surround rough wooden trestles and stools. Her costumes echo their colourless lives. Beige, brown and ochre predominate until priests of the Inquisition arrive in even more sombre black. There is no doubt about the mood Scane has created.

The family is a hotch potch of relatives, brought together by war and destitution.  Felix (Dave Kirkham) and his daughters Therese (Kit Bennett) and Marie (Kitty Hopwood) and Marie’s ex-soldier husband, Gerard (James Collette), have taken in Felix’s out spoken sister Isabelle (Helen Tonkin) and her only surviving daughter, Bernadette (Bonnie Kellett), who is a bit of a rebel. They are not necessarily happy with their lot or each other – and this is complicated further with the arrival of a girl claiming to be Joan, ‘the Maid’ (Sylvia Keays) and a visiting Cardinal (Lynden Jones) and his self-righteous acolyte Father Berthold (Ted Crosby).

In his writing, Gilchrist has tried to bring together and expose a number of character failings: in members of the family; in their different reactions to ‘Joan’; in the guile of the ‘pretender’ Joan; in the righteous representatives of the church. Unfortunately their failings – and the unnecessarily lengthy dialogue he uses to expose them – becomes tedious, excessively so at times. The cast establish their characters relatively strongly at first, but long, wordy, often repetitious dialogue, detracts from the action, the tension and the possible character dynamics.

This may be a case where some workshops, some editing  – or bravely handing the play to a director other than the playwright himself – might have honed and streamlined the dialogue, giving the actors a better chance to internalize their characters and their reactions.

Nevertheless, many of them make the most of their characters, especially the two performers with least to say. Kit Bennett is appealingly engaging and convincing as the quiet, watchful ‘mouse’ Therese. Never does she slip from character despite the fact that her role requires her to sit and stitch for much of the play. She watches closely and reacts totally in character, and when she does speak, her lines are brief and apt and beautifully delivered.

Dave Kirkham as Felix, too, has little dialogue compared with other characters, yet his depiction of this sad, confused, put-upon old man struggling to do the right thing by his family, the village and the church is quite moving.

As Joan, Sylvia Keays is strong in her introductory monologue, a waif-like character, wide eyed and seemingly innocent, a characteristic that fades as her real background and deceit becomes evident. In the second act, chained to a stool, she sits on the stage, restricted to pleading with words and her expressive eyes.

In a small theatre space, the audience is closer to the action, able to observe more closely details that a more distant audience might miss, for instance, bare feet and ankles that probably should be a little dirty from the farmyard or the village streets and screams and temper stomping footsteps that echo too loudly in a confined space.

This production has a lot to say about personal relationships and politics and religion, all of which are relevant to their time and to today – but like some of the characters say of poor, outspoken Isabelle, the script ‘talks too much’ and the impact of the messages is lost in too many words.

Carol Wimmer

Images: Sylvia Keays and James Collette, photographer: Daniela Giorgi; Kit Bennett, photographer: Liam O'Keefe, and Sylvia Keays, photographer: Liam O'Keefe.