Saint Joan (Donmar, 10 February)

So many things didn't work in this production that, in the end, its strength was a testament to how strong the good bits were. The updating, with the various French and English armies as "capital groups," and Joan praying while PowerPoint-esque images of money flowed across the screen, didn't work at all. And I though Our Gemma, although fine, was not particularly great: a "bright spark," as university advertisements tell their students to be, but not really charismatic enough to explain why all of these people suddenly started to agree with her. The male characters--and it never really struck me before, what a male play this is--seemed as much pleased with themselves for pushing on a female apprentice as genuinely wooed by what she was saying. The only part of the modern set that worked was the office table at the center, which focused the play in terms of staging and theme. This has never seemed to me more like a play about how committees not so much make decisions as ratify the pre-existing, using the space of discussion to entertain possibility before thoroughly shutting it down.

There was something basically unfair in having an actor known primarily for film at the center of a cast stocked by stage veterans--or, alternately, a brilliant decision to exploit the unevenness of Shaw's play against Joan and towards everyone else. I'm not overly-inclined to say this of productions, but the glory here was in the male cast, who were up-and-down exceptional. In particular Rory Keenan as the Inquisitor was out-and-out astonishing. I thought his last act, where the modern fripperies were at a minimum, was the most effective: with no distractions, this played out as the best transcription of a high-stakes committee meeting--which is to say, how much of history actually happens--ever recorded. This Joan was so outmatched, from the beginning, that she never really ascended high enough to seem tragic: she is promoted by whim, and beaten back down by the accumulated force of bureaucracy.

But what glories of bureaucratic acting these were! This was, sadly, a Joan for our times: one in which the promise of youth was preordained to be trampled, from the first scene onwards. I've rarely seen suits worn better on stage, and to such effect: to show a world where individual style is possible, but only if the rules are slavishly followed. Putting Joan as the only character in period dress seemed less like admitting history than admitting idiosyncratic individual style--and we all know what happens to individuality when the powers that be are on a consolidating kick. Acting-wise, I don't think I've ever seen Shaw done better, minute to minute: this was impressively focused, showing an establishment elegantly coiled up to put down intrusions. A nugatory staging and a merely decent central performance actually brought the script into focus for me.