Theatre reviews: Saint Joan | The Events

Saint Joan, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★★

The Events, Tron Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★★

In a world increasingly dominated by brutes and brutalism, theatre has a vital role to play in bringing us together, both to bear witness to the horrors committed, and to begin the search for points of resistance and hope.

Mandipa Kabanda’s Joan of Arc is a thoroughly contemporary figure (Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic)

So it has been thrilling, this week, to see Scottish theatre stepping up to that task with two brilliant shows that both confront the worst our times have to offer, and have been greeted with huge enthusiasm by audiences hungry for their honesty, and their creative response to horror.

Glasgow director Stewart Laing’s Saint Joan, at the Citizens’ and on tour, is a memorably bold and radical new interpretation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play. Its theme is resistance, passionately embodied by Mandipa Kabanda as Joan of Arc, the 15th century farmer’s daughter who hears voices from God telling her to lead the French army in resisting English rule in France.

Laing’s Joan, though, is thoroughly contemporary figure in her defiance of patriarchal authority, religious, political or military; and in Laing’s rewrite of the story, its contemporary echoes – from Iran to Palestine and beyond – roll out around the action, while the play itself defies the conventions of theatre, presenting the action in form of a screenplay, with camera shots described, and read out like stage directions.

The effect is truly Brechtian, as the six-strong cast – which also features Thierry Mabonga as the French military commander, and Martin O’Connor as both Chorus and Inquisitor – map out the big picture of war in detached style.

Claire Lamont as Clare searches for meaning in The Events (Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic)

As we move towards Joan’s trial and execution by burning, though, the acting becomes richer and more focused by the minute. Then, in a brilliant final reversal, we move into a brief film, directed by Adura Onashile; a fierce Glasgow rooftop vision of a young woman at the point where death seems preferable to a life of oppression and rank injustice. The film is both disturbing and beautiful; and it provides a stunning conclusion to a truly remarkable 21st century variation on Joan’s timeless story.

It’s almost 18 months since director Jack Nurse, of Wonder Fools, first revived David Greig’s fine 2013 play The Events, inspired by the aftermath of the horrific 2011 mass shooting in Norway; and now, that production has been refined and restaged for a short Scottish tour.

Greig’s play is set in the community hall next to a church, where the minister, Clare, runs a jolly multi-cultural choir; until the day when a young man enters their welcoming room, and starts shooting.

Clare somehow survives the massacre; and the story centres on her desperate search for reasons why, and for some kind of closure. She talks to a senior cleric, to her loving parter, to the boy’s father, eventually to the boy himself; while Greig’s writing lays bare some of the most painful crises of our time - the rising racism, the re-emergence of far right politics and organised misogyny, the failures of liberalism – and the 15-strong community choir play a vital role in capturing key moments of the story.

In this new staging, every element of Greig’s drama seems to come together in a shivering, grief-stricken perfection. The stacking-chairs design by Becky Minto, lit by Lizzie Powell, is as brilliant as ever. John Browne’s musical score is shudderingly powerful; and the Glasgow community choir, at the Tron, is simply magnificent – funny, tragic, musically eloquent. And Claire Lamont as Clare, and an astonishing Sam Stopford as every other character, deliver two leading performances that are almost beyond praise; in a great play for today that faces the worst, and still, in the end, finds the strength to keep singing.

Saint Joan at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until 28 February; and on tour, including the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, 18-21 March. The Events at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until tomorrow; at Dundee Rep, 25 February; and at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 27-28 February.