Saint Joan

Or: Voice of the Nation

Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Joan d’Arc (Tiffany Renee Johnson) who was not expected to become anything. Yet she was visited by a righteous power and conceived a mission, with the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret in her ears, to take the field of battle and lead armies and secure the rightful French King, Charles the Dauphin (Ann-Claude Rakotoniaiana, winner of the best name award 2017) on the throne. And she succeeded, until her followers, displeased by her uncompromising nature, allowed her to fall into the hands of her enemies and the fires that they stoked.

Or. Once upon a time, there was a young black woman who was not expected become anything. Yet she was visited by a righteous feeling and conceived a mission, with the words of Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama in her ears, to take the corridors of power, deliver the nightly news, and show to all the world the plain and simple truth that a woman of color has as much right to respect and power as anyone else. And she succeeded, until her cohorts, displeased by her uncompromising nature, allowed her to fall into the hands of her enemies and the fires that they stoked.

So runs the double reality of Marylynne Anderson-Cooper’s all-female take on George Bernard Shaw’s retelling of the legend of St. Joan of Arc. Set amid the offices and press rooms of a major news syndicate, but with the language of knights and revenue and heresy, it’s sometimes an eye-watering trick to get the two worlds to line up. Delightful questions are spawned: What are the English in this world? Who is the Dauphin? What does being burned at the stake equal here? What is death and the hereafter? Of course, there are moments when the two worlds slide perfectly in sync with each other for moments either of humor or heartbreak.

Shaw is no easy playwright to handle and his welter of speeches: ecclesiastical, historical or otherwise, are well grappled by the cast in both expounding excellence and quick nits of wit. Still, some like Robert de Baudricourt (Christabel Donkor), The Archbishop (Carolyn Nelson) and the grand inquisitor (Renee Lockett) handle the text with less clawing than others. The highpoint of the speeches all sing out but there are moments of breathless quiet beauty to, like when General/News Anchor Jean de Dunois (Sophie Neff) shares a moment watching a kingfisher with her aide-die-camp/makeup artist (Gracie Schwartzenberger) or in the wake of Charles’s coronation when Jean is the first to warn Joan her allies are not what they seem, or simply the moment when Joan reaches out for her spiritual guides and is met with defining silence.

Johnson is an exemplary saint. She effortlessly embodies the energy, so frenetic it translates into serenity, that makes the saint and inspiration what she is. But beneath that radiance of the Joan of the War is also an enticing struggle, as the Joan of the Workplace struggles to arrest and command without ever being judged as a threatening, entitled, angry black woman. When that self-crusade finally collapses at her trial into a righteous and electric storm. She and Anderson-Cooper (with help from the costume designer Olivia Moechet) play an excellent game of commentary with Joan among the other women: not only does she wear explicitly androgynous attire but even appearing in a gorgeous head tie. Joan is a woman proud of all aspects of herself and carries each of them as a tool of destiny, held up so others might see. Rakotoniaiana also gives a good peace as the odd woman out sensible of and ambiguous about the weight resting on her shoulders. Her voice is royal and her cruelty, when it appears, is crushingly impersonal. And Schwartzenberger proves a lovely and jovial leitmotif of underlings, sometimes nervous, sometimes sensible, sometimes supercilious but always keeping Shaw’s insistence that the unknown commoner is just as important as the storied hero.

Anderson-Cooper’s Saint Joan may be highly conceptualized, but for the questions it raises are intriguing rather than frustrating ones and we are never alienated from the play. This is simply a newsroom, run by women (huzzah), who conduct their very articulate lives in the manner of thirteenth-century France. We get the passion and blood in one hand and receive the lessons in inequity and faithlessness in the other, and find that Shaw’s Saint Joan is just as timeless, just as captivating, and just as fun in whatever role its cast.