★★★☆☆
In the spirit of this production, I bring you BREAKING NEWS. Director Josie Rourke and her creatives at the Donmar have done their best to update St Joan, one of George Bernard Shaw’s wordiest endeavours. To that end, we begin with “breaking news” unfolding on a back screen with a Bloomberg presenter telling us, in that urgent voice they use for financial stories, that “There is a major and inexplicable egg shortage in France . . .”
The year may be 1429 (it seems they had television then, who knew?) but it’s modern dress for the men we now see at an urgent meeting over hen non-production. “Sir, what can I do?” pleads the steward, clutching a can of Red Bull, to his master. “I cannot lay eggs!” Soon the screen is filled with business news: the Loire 100 has gone bonkers — again. But then the girl Joan, who says she hears voices telling her to save France and crown the Dauphin, appears and the hens start to lay.
It’s all rather amusing but soon the fun and games dwindle as market news is replaced by a series of marathon talkathons among men of import about whether the girl Joan is mad, bad or merely dangerous to know. Gemma Arterton stars as the young and naive Joan, her face shining, her faith evangelical, her confidence in her ability to beat the English and make the Dauphin king absolute.
This production has pared this play right back in more than one way. We see no action, blood or guts, fire or battle foes.
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Instead the set is streamlined to the point of providing what can only be called an elegant sufficiency, a long glass board table with white leather chairs revolves endlessly on a stage as circular as the arguments among the men, representing church and state.
The play, famously garrulous, has been hacked back but still came in at two hours and 45 minutes on press night. Rourke needs to be as ruthless with the words as Robert Jones has been in designing the set. The arguments over faith, nationalism, the Church, Protestantism and women’s rights are relevant but lengthy, especially in such a sterile environment. Even the conceit of TV news updates falters after a while though not until we’ve seen Evan Davis on Newsnight announcing Joan’s win at Orleans.
The cast saves the day. Arterton is luminescent as Joan, presenting her as an evangelist that you could imagine today proselytizing on a street corner. Fisayo Akinade is on fetching form as the insipid Dauphin. Niall Buggy is a table-thumping archbishop while Rory Keenan impersonates a stiletto as the Inquisitor.
So many words, though, and so little action. It makes you yearn for egg news.
Box office: 0844 871 7624, to February 18