Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA
through September 6, 2015
by Jarice Hanson
It can be a great privilege to see a play go from page to
stage, and for those who attended the reading of "Mother of the Maid"
at Berkshire Playwrights Lab last year, the wait to see how Jane Anderson’s
ambitious story of Joan of Arc, told through her mother’s eyes, has ended. The
world premiere of "Mother of the Maid" at Shakespeare & Company’s
Bernstein Theatre has opened, but before reviewing this new work, I was able to
speak with director Matthew Penn, and some of the cast while deep into the
rehearsal process.
Penn is one of the founders of Berkshire Playwright’s Lab,
now in its eighth year. He has directed other plays at Shakespeare & Co.,
and, when his friend Jane Anderson told him about her script, he became
interested in bringing it to the Berkshires. Tina Packer immediately came to mind as the character of the
Mother, and it becomes obvious in the play that only an actor of such depth and
skill could effectively embody this role.
Packer is wonderful as Isabelle Arc, mother of the martyr,
and the link between Joan’s spiritual self and the real world. On stage in
every scene, Packer expansively fills the theatre with her vocal power and
personality. Watching her try to reason with her daughter “Joanie,” played by Anne Troup, she
resigns herself to the role a mother inevitably has to play. “Your kids are
your kids. You never know how they’re going to turn out," she laments.
When I asked Tina Packer whether she modeled her character
on anyone in particular, she said without missing a beat, “My own mum and my
Auntie Rosa.” While watching Isabelle viciously fight for her daughter’s
rights, she walked to Rome to beg the Pope to lift the accusation that Joan was
a heretic (she was successful), you get the sense that Packer comes from a long
line of strong women.
As Penn said in our discussion, “Every great play had a
first day of rehearsal.” Some of the challenges of mounting this new work come
from the blending of politics, religion, and parenthood, and perhaps our
collective knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of Joan of Arc becomes fodder for
finding the meaning in the story. Ultimately, it becomes a story about parenthood;
in a form that Penn says has a “classical framework, with contemporary
resonance.”
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| Photo by Enrico Spada |
The cast and production team also had the benefit of having
the author of the play come to the Berkshires for two weeks to work with them
on crafting the play for the stage. Troup mentioned that Anderson stressed the
rhythm of the language, and I agree that when the play is most satisfying is
when the language flows. It isn’t jarring to hear the French characters play
their roles with British accents (what else do you expect at Shakespeare &
Company?) but Anderson pushes the contemporary themes of the play further with
colloquial speech—Joan says, “Hi mum” when she sees her mother; and Joan’s
father, Jacques, ably played by Nigel Gore, blusters like a familiar television
dad. The most unconventional character is St. Catherine, played by Bridget
Saracino, who looks as though she’s just stepped out of a painting (and her
entrance is literally, just that), but talks directly to the audience with
American euphemisms to help guide the story along.
"Mother of the Maid" has a fascinating premise and
is deftly executed by the talented company. There has been a successful
migration from page to stage, and the next chapter of this story is to see
whether audiences resonate with the multiple themes and presentational styles
to cut through the horror of what happens to Joan. We react viscerally to the
description of Joan’s burning, but what happens to the family is a timeless
reminder that families—especially mothers, can still love each other, even when
they don’t agree.
