Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Four stars
When George Bernard Shaw dragged himself out of premature retirement in 1923, the great man’s late burst was inspired by Joan of Arc being made a saint. A decade on, Shaw was persuaded to write a screenplay based on his drama. As other filmmakers have shown, the story of the French teenager who made France great again after hearing holy voices in her head only to be burnt at the stake for her trouble was ripe big screen material. Shaw’s slimmed down version of his play, alas, remains unmade.
It is his screenplay, however, that is the source of director/designer Stewart Laing’s remarkable rendering that sees Martin O’Connor’s malevolent Chorus speak the scenic directions as the action unfolds. At points his narration makes him sound like a frontline war correspondent in a way that recalls the historical reconstructions of Peter Watkins’s great documentary styled film, Culloden, by way of the voiceover disruptions of radical Left Bank director Marguerite Duras.
With the lights kept up on the audience for much of the production’s intense ninety-minutes in the Citz’s Studio theatre, young men go to war dressed down in hoodies and tracksuit bottoms, with the ensuing verbal skirmishes resembling a gang fight between wasted youth conscripted into pointless conflicts. All this takes place without a punch thrown on a stage bare other than for a large white screen, so the full futility of the conflict is exposed.
The second half focuses on Joan’s trial, which sees Mandipa Kabanda’s defiant adolescent face her inquisitors in school clothes, as if she’s been hauled before some archaic head teachers for daring to wear trousers in class rather than put on the uniform of a warrior in a way that so offends these old men demonising her actions.
Led by producers Raw Material with Perth Theatre and Aberdeen Performing Arts in association with the Citizens Theatre, Laing has created a quietly devastating reinvention of Shaw’s work. While on stage the superlative cast is completed by Lewis MacDougall, Manasa Tagica, Ross Mann and Thierry Mabonga, things end with an epilogue that comes in the form of an actual film. This is made by Adura Onashile, a theatre maker and artist as maverick as Laing. Inbetween Kapanda’s Joan speaking direct to camera, contemporary documentary footage shows how saints are still being burnt, even as Joan’s ascension sees her fly towards some kind of freedom.
The Herald, February 19th 2026
Ends
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