Writer: Ruthie Black after George Bernard Shaw
Director: Peter Hinton-Davis
George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan calls for a cast of over 20 and typically runs north of three hours. Ruthie Black’s two-hander take on the piece, styled as ‘after George Bernard Shaw’, runs for a mere 70 minutes and still manages to cram in sung verse from Wilfred Owen, a First World War trench song, and what might be part of a ditty from Irish composer Leo Maguire. Oh, and the characters FaceTime each other live on stage at one point. You will need to keep up as director Peter Hinton-Davis ensures the piece rattles along at a ferocious speed. A passing awareness of Shaw’s chronicle of conflict will certainly help.
It is 1431 in Rouen, and Joan (Ruthie Black, who starts angry, veers into furious and finishes apoplectic) faces trial for heresy. Opposing her is The Interrogator (James Saxby, who also takes on various other male roles). At stake is her life and the future of France. The audience takes the role of the jury, though in fairness, we don’t have an awful lot to do. In the original, Shaw’s Inquisitor delivers a long trial speech on the nature of heresy. The dialogue is a masterpiece of dramatic rhetoric. Black distils it into two or three lines which deliver the information but rob it of effect, a problem that recurs throughout the piece.
A flashback takes us back two years. Joan is hearing voices. The “blessed St Catherine and St Margaret” are calling on her to raise the siege at Orléans and place a crown on the head of the reluctant Dauphin (Saxby plays him as a foppish, slightly camp, dandy). Joan also has to make the English “Goddams” leave France, and entice the rural poor to forget their duty to feudal lords in favour of God and country. All this proves to be a tall order, especially as we only have 70 minutes.
Black focuses the dialogue on Joan’s interactions with those aiding her, particularly the Bastard of Orléans, rather than those opposing her, though we hear about the deeds of the Catholic Church and the nefarious English at second-hand. Something has to give in an adaptation this short, but what is lost is Shaw’s scrupulously equitable presentation of contrasting viewpoints.
Joan, fearful of death, confesses her sins, but the Inquisitor promises to imprison her anyway. So, she recants her confession and gets burned at the stake. In the closing moments, we get a version of Shaw’s famously stinging epilogue question, “How long, O Lord, how long?” The answer here is both too long and not long enough.
Runs until 12 April 2026
