SAINT JOAN WITH A BROGUE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1049, 2 October 1959, Page 4

SAINT JOAN WITH A BROGUE

F Eliot’s elder statesman was consumed by doubts, Saint Joan as seen by Shaw only once wavered from absolute faith. Most of the time she had the maddening certainty of the fanatic, totally incapable of conceiving any other reality. As played by Siobhan McKenna, the Sunday Showcase production for next week, she is*a thick-brogued peasant, tough, practical and singleminded. Miss McKenna has discussed her reasons for this interpretation. "T feel that everything stems from her country upbringing," she said, "that’s why I start off in a red peasant dress and finish in the same dress. Shaw makes the point that her military leadership even comes from the particular common sense which country people have. What I love about Joan is her common sense; the voices are always backed up by practical things. Consider her answer when she is asked why she wears men’s clothes: ‘If-I were to dress as a woman, they would think of me as a woman; and then what would become of me?’ She is a practical saint. She is also like Al Capp’s Bald Iggle, which insists that people tell the truth. It was Joan’s absolute burning honesty and truthfulness, her refusal to compromise by flattering anybody, that was her downfall. She just couldn’t pretend. Country people don’t. If I buy a hat and wear it to Mass in the country and someone else doesn’t like the hat, that

person will tell me it’s awful-tell me the truth just as an act of charity." Some of this bluntness is part of Miss McKenna, who has been in trouble on BEC television for expressing her views

on Ireland. She concurs with Joan’s explanation that God gave us our countries and languages, and meant us to keep to them. She also emphasises Joan’s love for the common people, who accepted, her, and the distrust felt by the feudal hierarchy who feared her effect on their power.

"Shaw points out that we pay lip-service to truth and _saintliness, but we don’t want them with us if they are going to interfere," she said. "One of the most important things I feel about Joan is that she is not a rounded saint until the epilogue. She has the makings of a saint, but at the trial she is not a saint because she commits one of the ‘greatest sins, that of despair. So you can’t play her as a complete saint. Her great achievement occurred when her voices left her-all her military achievements are not her’s but God’s «+ The voices left

Joan to stand on her own two feet. This to me is her greatness-that, having been blessed with this extraordinary communication with God, when she is in prison, weak and alone, it comes to a choice, she makes the choice of faith, of her own free will-without God's help but with His grace. This.is what made her a saint." The recording which will be played in ZB Sunday Showcase was made in September, 1956, with the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Drama Festival production, shortly after it opened in New York after seasons in Boston and Philadelphia. By this time Miss McKenna was more than familiar with the fole. Early in her acting career she had translated the play into Gaelic for performances in Galway, and then played the part in Dublin and London, before her greatest triumph in New York. There she played the role with a fierce intensity, forcing the audience to believe itself in close contact with somecne, however one-dimensional; in close communication with something, however intangible. Saint Joan is a full length performance, to be broadcast in two parts on successive ZB Sunday Showcases. Part One, down to the end of scene 5 (at the end of the coronation) will be heard on October 11; the remainder will be played on October 18.