Review: St Joan

Let's start by getting the cat out of the bag straight away: Philip O'Sullivan's adaptation of Bernard Shaw's St. Joan is not for everyone.

It is, with periodic bursts of sadness and humour, a very grim, wordy and intense experience, structured like a fully fleshed out body of text around its verbal and verbally tortured heart.

But as an insular, intimate drama about the warring factions within seemingly dour but increasingly chaotic confines, it works – at times, brilliantly so.

The decision to move this telling of the legendary Joan of Arc into a modern office block is absolutely inspired – the set design, by the award-winning Grace Smart, is probably the best I have seen at the Lyric Theatre to date.

The white light shining through the large, bar-strewn window at the back of the stage is the perfect barrier between the open and the oppressive, the gorgeous and the grimy, casting a shadow over the sometimes punctual and sometimes haphazard goings-on around and upon the desks, tables and chairs within. It is arguably enough to tell a story in itself. But what would the background aesthetics of a Joan of Arc tale be without a strong title character to go with it?

Into that role steps Lisa Dwyer Hogg, whose performance here firmly establishes her as one of today's best leading ladies in NI Theatre. When we first get to know her Joan, so to speak, she is a maid caught in a tug of war between a squire (Alan McKee) and his steward Polly (Abigail McGibbon). Their heavily-accented debate, reworked slightly as contemporary banter, provides light relief as we come to terms with Joan's split personality. With her lanky hair, torn jeans and baggy jacket, she is like a righteous adult feminist trapped in the skin of a teenage rebel, an eloquent delinquent.

In other words, she is just right for Shaw's strong narrative, and Dwyer Hogg, O'Sullivan and director Jimmy Fay work tirelessly to build themes within and around her during the production. They are successfully aided by an equally diligent, multi-character playing supporting cast of six whose importance and commitment enhances as the play moves on.

What begins as a seemingly superficial tug of war becomes a three way tug of war around a bleeding hearted firebrand involved in a literally titanic struggle with law, religion and monarchy, centralized in the lusts and desires of Joan herself. She wishes to make the fey Dauphin (Kevin Trainor) King, but even as she succeeds his concerns appear to be more for the privileges of ruling rather than its responsibilities.

And what of her own responsibilities? At one point she tells the general Dunois (McGibbon again) that, "if you were to deliver me from fear, I would be a very good knight in a storybook but a very poor commander of the army." Words can never speak as loud as actions that Joan, even with her hair cut short and dressed in a suit, seems incapable of carrying out. Is she a saint, or is she a soldier? And how damaging is it for her, and for the church and state, that she will be thought of as a witch and a heretic?

Knowing the real Joan of Arc's fate does not diminish the power of Dwyer Hogg's multi-faceted, multi-costumed emoting and breakdown on the way to and throughout her inevitable trial. Her real fear, as it turns out, is not her stained reputation, but distance and isolation – an everlasting, universal problem that most of us know all too well. It's humanity that St. Joan needs to endure as a think piece and a one-woman character study – and it's a credit to everyone involved that it succeeds as both.

Simon Fallaha

St. Joan runs at Belfast's Lyric Theatre until Saturday, 08 October.