Joan of Arc’s story of power and heresy arrives at the Lemon Tree this week.
Joan of Arc led an army at sixteen.
George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play about her life, Saint Joan, is one of the great works of twentieth-century theatre. It’s also a sprawling, ambitious piece written for big stages with big casts. Which makes Stewart Laing’s decision to strip it back to something intimate and close-up all the more interesting.
The production arrives at the Lemon Tree this week (from Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 March) part of its debut UK tour. Tickets are still available.
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What to know before you go
Laing, a Tony Award-winning director, has reimagined Shaw’s text for small spaces with limited resources. It’s the kind of constraint that tends to sharpen a piece rather than diminish it. When there’s nowhere to hide behind spectacle, the story has to do the work.
And the story here is a striking one. A girl from a marginalised background, with no military training and no political standing, convinces the French military leadership to let her command troops during the Hundred Years War. She succeeds. Then she faces trial.
Shaw’s play wrestles with what that arc means: power, institutions closing ranks, youth and certainty mistaken for madness by the people in charge. Laing has described staging it now as looking at Joan “with fresh eyes,” with news feeds dominated by global conflict and a new generation openly confronting authority.
History’s verdict
Joan’s story has been told and retold because it resists easy conclusions. She was canonised nearly five hundred years after she was burned. History took its time deciding what to make of her.
The production includes a film sequence written and directed by Adura Onashile, actor, playwright and director.
See it at the Lemon Tree
Co-produced by Perth Theatre and Aberdeen Performing Arts, Saint Joan brings together a considerable team for what is, in practice, a chamber piece.
The Lemon Tree suits this kind of work. It’s a small enough room that nothing gets lost, and the staging takes full advantage of that.
Saint Joan plays the Lemon Tree 12–14 March. Tickets are available via Aberdeen Performing Arts.
