Theatre in Review: Mother of the Maid (The Public Theater)

	Dermot Crowley, Glenn Close. Photo: Joan Marcus

The Public Theater gets into the star vehicle business with Mother of the Maid, a thoroughly entertaining historical drama that oddly recalls the Broadway theatre of an earlier era. Fortunately, there's a fully charged star at stage center in the person of Glenn Close; she creates a character so indelible and incandescent that all eyes remain on her and not the world-historical (and canonized) character standing beside her.

From The Real Thing to The Wife, Close has gravitated toward characters of privilege, but here, as the title suggests, she plays Isabelle, mother of Joan of Arc -- and it is fascinating to see how she transforms herself into a fifteenth-century French peasant without losing her natural authority and wit. Much of the first act tracks Isabelle's surprise and bemusement at having birthed a daughter who -- her visions having directed her to lead the French army against the invading English -- challenges the patriarchal structures of church and state, and who -- for a while, anyway -- gets away with it. The playwright, Jane Anderson, finds all sorts of ways to illustrate Isabelle's extraordinary position, making high comedy out of historical and supernatural events.

Indeed, Close finds a fresh attitude for every unthinkable development. When Joan confesses to having visions of Saint Catherine, Isabelle gushes, indulgently, "Oh. She's a lovely saint. That's lovely, Joanie. How long has this been going on?" She counsels Joan to find a good convent where she will learn to read and write, adding, "and if you play your cards right, you could become an abbess. Abbesses get to tell people what to do; you'd like that." Trying to calm her irascible husband, Jacques, who is scandalized by the thought of his daughter in the army, Isabelle says, brightly, "She'll be someone to go along and keep the troops cheerful." Isabelle is a rough-edged, practical sort, schooled enough in the world's ways to note with a shrug that "motherhood is a numbers game, and you're bound to lose a few before you're done." But she is also possessed of a natural radiance, whether delightedly greeting a shaft of light that -- she believes -- represents the visitation of a saint, or, stunned by her good fortune, holding in her hand that rarest of objects, a glass goblet. (It is filled with mead, which she, unused to such treats, will happily down in one gulp.)

Then again, Isabelle is not to be trifled with. She accedes to having the rebellious Joan beaten by Jacques; she disapprovingly tells her daughter, who has become a national heroine, "I raised you to be kind and now you're acting like it's some big thrill for you to be killing people;" and she furiously informs a priest, who has piously asserted that the future is in God's hands, "That gets you off the hook, don't it, God and his bloody plans." That last remark comes when everything has gone wrong -- Joan, held by the English, is being tried for heresy and is facing certain death if she doesn't renounce her visions. It's enough to break any mother, but Isabelle doesn't flinch at entering her daughter's prison cell, cleaning her filthy body, and standing by her in her darkest hour. Tragedy has a clarifying effect on Isabelle: Note her blazing stare, which seems to penetrate any surface, including armor, and her arm's catch-and-release movement, ending in a j'accuse gesture, finger pointed like a weapon against anyone who incurs her disapproval; such gestures suggest that Joan's heroic nature is imprinted in her DNA.

The first act, in which Isabelle, having been swept up into Joan's orbit, ends up at court as a kind of demi-celebrity, is engaging, if reminiscent of the half-century-old dramas of Robert Bolt, Peter Shaffer, and, perhaps, James Goldman. For that matter, it's easy to imagine a great lady star of the golden era -- Katharine Cornell, perhaps, essaying the role of Isabelle. This isn't really a complaint -- Anderson's craft is solid, and she certainly knows how to write a line that cuts to the heart of the matter -- but it is surprising to be seeing this play at the Public, where playwrights routinely grapple with the political and social issues of today. As intermission comes around, you may find yourself wondering if Mother of the Maid exists only to give its star a strenuous emotional workout.

Anderson's intentions don't fully come into focus until about halfway through Act II, when, in a trio of frankly rendered and increasingly tense scenes, Isabelle faces off against a morally temporizing priest, finds herself deserted by false friends at court, and, finally, offers what comfort she can to the fallen Joan. In these scenes and an epilogue in which a hardened Isabelle recalls how, following Joan's ghastly death by fire, she took her daughter's case to Rome, staring down an all-male Vatican tribunal, Mother of the Maid is fully revealed as a woman forced by circumstances to speak truth to power, with results that have reverberated down through the centuries. Speaking of herself in the third person, Isabelle says, "She planned on shaking her fists for all eternity," and the actress gives you every reason to believe it.

Given a plot centering on a powerful young woman demonized and destroyed by the men who previously depended on her, I certainly don't need to draw parallels with current events -- and, perhaps for obvious reasons, the theatre is on a Joan of Arc kick these days -- not always happily. The Public, working with David Byrne, tried a musical about her two seasons ago, with lackluster results, and Manhattan Theatre Club offered a dismal revival of Shaw's Saint Joan last year. A summer revival of the Henry VI plays offered Shakespeare's not terribly admiring portrait of her. (If we're not careful, someone will bring back the flop Joel Grey musical, Goodtime Charlie, about Joan and the Dauphin.) Mother of the Maid may seem at times to hail from another era, but, thanks to its solid construction and plainspoken manner, it makes the best argument yet for the continuing relevance of Joan's story for today's audiences. And by focusing on Isabelle, Anderson happily gives it a provocative new slant.

Matthew Penn has supplied a swift, gripping staging manned by a strong supporting cast. Grace Van Patten's Joan, striding about the stage in armor and demonstrating the best way to unfurl a sword, is rough-edged, yet a true leader of men; I wish she'd have an opportunity to true out Shaw's version. (She is also totally believable when addressing her "Ma" with the exasperation shared by millions of other young women, and she also has a true tragic dignity when, having been stripped of everything, including her guiding voices, she faces imminent death.) Dermot Crowley's Jacques is a patriarch of his time -- irascible, unable to understand his daughter, yet with a vein of tenderness underneath. Andrew Hovelson is fine as Pierre, Joan's brother -- who goes along for the ride, fighting by her side -- as is Daniel Pearce as a country priest who is the first to advance Joan's cause, and lives to rue it. Kate Jennings Grant brings high comedic style to the role of Nicole, a lady of the court, who befriends Isabelle yet is unable to help her when it really matters.

John Lee Beatty's imposing set features an upstage turntable that, among other things, discloses a palace wall in royal blue with gold fleurs-de-lis and a candlelit chapel with a staircase lined in mirrors. Jane Greenwood's costumes include stunning gowns for Grant's character, impressive armor for Joan, and changes of clothing for Isabelle, Jacques, and Pierre that keep tabs on their progress at court. Lap Chi Chu's lighting ranges from sunlight washes to a dank prison-cell atmosphere. The sound design, by Alexander Sovronsky and Joanna Lynne Staub, includes royal trumpets -- the original music is by Sovronsky -- in addition to the sounds of battle and the murmurs of a crowd waiting for an execution.

Even if this production at times seems a little off-topic in terms of the Public's mission, Close's performance is its own best defense. In what may be the actress' finest moment here, Isabelle enters holding a letter that she dictated to a professional scribe -- she is illiterate -- asking Charles, King of France, to pay Joan's ransom to the English. She hands the letter to Nicole, who reads it and sorrowfully delivers the news that the writer has put down not Isabelle's words but the lines of a bawdy poem. Isabelle's stunned dismay is terribly affecting; a casual, cruel trick leaves her suddenly stripped of hope. Trying to dictate a second letter, she is overwhelmed by distress, and words fail her. The pain and confusion in the actress' eyes are haunting; whatever the circumstances, the Public, and we are lucky to have her. -- David Barbour