|
With Imogen Stubbs as the Maid, this high-gloss revival of Bernard Shaw's oldest New Woman launches from Theatr Clwyd and, with Duncan Weldon taking it on tour, is clearly destined for the West End.
It's a British debut for director Gale Edwards, who has an impressive track record in Australia. Production values are lavish. Peter Davison's setting is a skewed grey box with sliding screens revealing the Dauphin's crowded court, the river at Orleans, the columns of Rheims Cathedral, the glow of the stake.
And the production itself is a relatively operatic reading of Shaw's anti-bombastic morality tale of the homespun peasant girl who takes on the might and duplicity of English and French feudal aristocracies and the Catholic church and burns her way into mythology and (in 1920) sanctity.
The director's great at painting luscious spectacle and pointing up big moments with Hollywood-style background strings, less reliable when it comes to conveying the text clearly - and this is, first and last, a play of words and ideas.
Imogen Stubbs's Joan has charisma, strength and depth and a curious accent from somewhere between the Tyne and the Humber. Jasper Britton's bandy-legged, daffy Dauphin is a joy and there are other strong performances - Jack Carr's de Baudricourt, Bruce Purchase's Archbishop of Rheims, Andrew Jarvis's la Hire, Philip Quast's Dunois.
The trial scene, with Peter Jeffrey as the Inquisitor, is riveting as ever and the expedient negotiation between Ken Bones's Warwick and Paul Webster's Cauchon could be Bosnia tomorrow. Not a perfect production but a memorable one.
© Guardian Newspapers Ltd.