“You get a medal for bravery,” the usher said to me as I separated my two pair of tickets to a double header of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the same day with George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan. Admittedly, it was as daunting an immersion into heavy-duty theater as I would ever normally undertake. But I did it and I’m glad. I am also going to presume that it is as formidable and fun for the cast of four that played all the characters in both plays in the course of one day. Most days, it’s one or the other (check schedule.) That’s right only four actors are performing (I almost want to call them performance artists) these two iconic dramas. It is a rematch of an acclaimed Off-Broadway engagement in 2013. Bedlam is the name of the company responsible for these adventurous productions, and they command our respect and admiration for the laudably un-heavy-handed and generally respectful way each play is being done here in rotating repertory at the McCarter Theater Center. Last Saturday for me began at 3pm with Hamlet, with the seating later reconfigured for St. Joan. As with the Shakespeare drama, the staging brings Shaw’s harrowing 1923 drama with 22 characters up close and personal. Tucker’s direction of the play defines itself without the pretensions often ascribed to period dramas. There is, however, a conscientious alignment with contemporary styles in the costuming that works well enough. Seeing a Princeton baseball cap and a motorcycle helmet on a soldier added a bit of humor in an otherwise grim drama. To be honest, St. Joan is much more ponderous and a lot less fun than Hamlet but not without its worthiness. While the six scenes in the play, including that brilliantly out-of-time-and-space epilogue, resonate with that which is Shaw, there is not a moment in which the actors appear even slightly daunted by his talky salvos. Shaw’s audiences had more patience for speechifying and mostly displayed an admiration for his incomparable if also insufferable wit. As portrayed heroically and with little pretense of being a girl of sixteen, Ms Nichols’s Joan is understandably characterized as more warrior-woman than saint (a stance that has also inspired some of the greatest actors of the twentieth century including Katherine Cornell, Uta Hagen, and Lynn Redgrave), the result is a unique performance that, nevertheless, also radiates with the devotion to her faith and dedication to her cause. Besides Tucker’s Joan, a dozen roles are shared by the other three actors, each of whom contribute to making the heartbreaking core of the play also theatrically palatable. To be sure, we are asked to make allowances for the Bedlam point-of-view. Neither is Shaw’s point-of-view distorted in any meaningful way as we watch and listen to the purpose and the plight of a young 15th century French woman who responds as an undaunted activist to the instructive voices/messengers of God Saints Catherine and Margaret. This, as she is prompted to lead French troops against the English directly in the face of a male-entrenched hierarchy. It’s always a treat to watch talented performers take on multiple roles to show their versatility. O’Keefe make an impressive leap from a teasing Bluebeard to a testy Catholic Bishop. But it is no less an awesome transformation than that of Lewis as the infantile Dauphin who is destined to become the King but reluctant to assume any authority over the army, and who then becomes the soulless Chaplain who campaigns for Joan’s death at the stake. You won’t see much if anything that subscribes to the 15th century in the trappings. As with Hamlet, the audience becomes the on-lookers and participants in the infamous trial scene and its aftermath. While I would like to suggest that seeing both plays, as performed by this excellent young company, makes for an exciting theatrical experience, St. Joan is less likely come around again as soon as Hamlet. So perhaps, for these times, Joan may offer that glimmer of hope and faith to those ready and willing to stand up against the ignorance and petulance of the powerful.
