|
Julie Daley as Joan of Arc and David Krajecki
as the Inquisitor in The Lark.
Photo: Katie Vandehey
|
The Lark
Lillian Hellman's adaptation of Jean Anouilh's L'Alouette
Directed by Kirsten Kelly
Through August 13: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 PM;
Sundays, 3 PM.. $12-$15.
The Eclipse Theatre Company
at the Athenaeum Theatre
first-floor studio theater
2936 N. Southport
312-902-1500
After Joan of Arc plays out her whole short life, including the burning at the stake followed by the Dauphin's coronation, she finally says "Let's end with it, please, if nobody would mind." I minded not. Eclipse Theatre Company's production of THE LARK is a labyrinth. For its second of three Lillian Hellman plays of this 2000 season, Eclipse has chosen Hellman's 1955 adaptation of L'Alouette, Jean Anouilh's 1953 play about Joan of Arc. The choices by both the theatre company and the American realistic playwright are curious. The production itself, which runs almost two and a half hours, is even more enigmatic. It is a melange of visions and ideas, and dramatic and technical styles.
THE LARK presents the trial and life of Joan of Arc. It is a play, her life, within a play, the trial. The First Act begins with another day at the trial. Warwick, the English official, wants to proceed to judgment and the burning. Cauchon, the French bishop, wants Joan to "play out her whole life first" in front of the gathered priests, who are the judges, the Promoter and the Inquisitor. Joan reenacts the important scenes in her family life: the appearance of Saint Michael the Archangel and other saints, the message of the Voices—a mission to save France, the anger of her father when she talks of her visions, the comforting of her mother, the cruelty of her brother. She then demonstrates how she persuades Robert de Beaudricourt to provide her with soldiers and a horse to go to the Dauphin's court and how she successfully implores the Dauphin to put her in charge of the French army. After each one of the vignettes from her life, the ecclesiastical court bombard her with theological questions.
Act Two begins with Warwick recounting the events of Joan's greatest victories, her abandonment by Charles, and her capture. "But every once in a while a lark does appear in your sky and then everything stupid and evil is wiped out by the shadow of the lark. . . . The lark has been captured. The King she crowned, the royal court she saved—for a minute, at least—are about to abandon their little girl." As the trial proceeds, Joan submits to the judgment of the Church to renounce the voices, the bearing of arms, the wearing of the soldier's uniform and to accept a sentence of life imprisonment to do penance for her sins. In prison, she repudiates her confession. "I took the good days from You and refused the bad. I know. Dear my God forgive me, and keep me now to be myself." She is burned at the stake. However, the final scene is the "true story of Joan. . . her happiest day," the Coronation of Charles in Reims Cathedral.
That Jean Anouilh would be interested in Joan of Arc is not surprising. Anouilh was a member of the existentialist movement that emerged during World War II. Jean Paul Sartre was "the most influential writer of existentialism in France." Anouilh participated in the movement with Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Eugene Ionesco. The essential tenet of the philosophy is that a person's existence, the identity, is realized by making choices and taking responsibility for one's actions. (Oxford Companion to French Literature, Oxford University Press, 1996.) The protagonists of three of Anouilh's most famous plays are existential heroes: Antigone (1942) ["To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It's easy to say no, even if it means dying."]; Beckett (1959-60) ["Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage."]; and Joan of Arc (1953). In the introduction to L'Alouette, "Mystère De Jeanne," Anouilh comments that the play is not an explication of the mystery of Joan of Arc. He notes that Joan is not recognized as a martyr, but as a saint who was canonized for her virtue, her actions, and not for her faith: "Le jeu de théâtre que l'on voir n'apporte rien à l'explication due mystère de Jeanne. . . . Elle a été canonisée pour 'l'excellence de ses vertues théologales' et non parce qu'elle est morte pour sa foi. . . ."
That Lillian Hellman wrote an adaptation of L'Alouette only two years after its original production is more difficult to fathom. There had already been a moderately successful English-language version of the play by Christopher Fry that was performed in London in 1955. Fry's version was "literary and philosophical." (Doris v. Falk, Lillian Hellman, Frederick Ungar Pub. Co., 1978, p.83.) Speculation about Hellman's interest in Joan of Arc has revolved around Hellman's politics and her feminism. In the 1950's Hellman was called to appear before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities. Her appearance resulted in blacklisting. "The theme of a woman being coerced by the state to testify to things she was unwilling to say had a rather direct connection with Hellman's own experience at the time." William Wright, Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman. Simon & Schuster, 1986. Another biographer believes that Joan's story "appealed to Hellman's love of a good fight and her admiration of the honorable professional soldier. She saw Joan more as a modern career woman than as either a saint or a peasant." Falk, Lillian Hellman, p. 84.
The presentational experimental form of L'Alouette was not part of Hellman's dramaturgy. Unlike her more innovative American dramatist peers—O'Neill, Odets, Wilder, Hellman is known as "the representative of the well-made play." (Brooks Atkinson, quoted in American Drama: 1900-1990, Cambridge Contexts in Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 101.) Her plays are melodramatic--not lyrical or philosophical. "Unlike Ibsen's, her issues are cut-and-dried and her discussions confirm, not challenge, our judgments." Bernard Dukore, quoted in American Drama: 1900-1990, p. 102. In THE LARK, Hellman essentially adopts Anouilh's presentational, nonrealistic form of a play within a play. Yet, there are realistic overlays in her staging directions. Hellman adapts Anouilh's minimalist staging: the action takes place on a series of neutral multi-level platforms; time and place are indicated by projections on a cyclorama. But Hellman's adaptation is suffused with music and with people. The music is essentially liturgical—from the Latin mass; it is omnipresent. Hellman also places all of the characters in Joan's life as well as the tribunal on the stage throughout the play. She adds village women, courtesans, soldiers to suggest the time and place. Hellman also deleted a key costuming instruction from L'Alouette. Anouilh specifically states that the costumes should not be realistic—only evocative: "Les costumes sont vaguement médiévaux, mais aucune recherche de forme ou de couleur; Jeanne est habillée en homme, une sorte de survêtement d'athlète."
THE LARK is the anomaly among the three Hellman works chosen by Eclipse Theatre Company for the 2000 season. Unlike the first play, the 1941 Watch on the Rhine, or the third, the 1946 Another Part of the Forest, THE LARK is neither realistic, written as a signature well-made play, nor an original work. Hellman wrote eight original plays, many of them quite well-known—The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes. Of her four adaptations, Candide is probably the most acclaimed, although THE LARK ran on Broadway for more than 229 performances. The original music by Leonard Bernstein and a stellar cast that included Julie Harris, Christopher Plummer, and Boris Karloff contributed to the theatrical success. Furthermore, because of its derivation, THE LARK is also a risk for any theatre company. The interplay of Hellman's American anti-fascism and feminism upon Anouilh's existentialist vision, with the representational cum presentational staging can challenge a director.
These are challenges that Kirsten Kelley has not met. Indeed, her concept of the meaning of the play infuses yet another world view. "But, now, in this time, we resurrect her story again and again as a tremendous example of faith . . . . We look to Joan and her story of incredible faith as an example, an inspiration and a memory of what has been depleted from our society. ("Director's Note.") These interpretations of Joan of Arc's story are not necessarily antithetical. But they do differ in focus. Such prismatic shifting focal points affect the staging, acting, and, ultimately, the success of this production.
If Joan is a saint, the focus is upon her actions and decisions; if Joan is a sociological icon, it is her relationship with others; if Joan is a martyr who dies for her faith, the focus is upon her interrogation by the representatives of the Church and the Inquisitor. The shifts of focus in this production are bewildering. At the beginning of THE LARK, a painter enters to put some finishing touches on a Renaissance-like painting of an Angel appearing to a Virgin. The Tribunal enters costumed very realistically in liturgical/cleric and medieval dress. Warwick is equipped with a sword. The vision is Joan the Virgin-martyr. In the first scenes with her family, Joan is the woman victim of a paternalistic, brutal society. The encounter with her father is performed with realistic violence. But, the visions are simulated by light. The setting extends into the audience with a triptych painting entitled "Injustice, Faith, Duty." Is the audience is part of the trial? Do we have complicity in destroying this peasant? Are we part of a fascist world? Joan's scenes with Robert de Beaudricourt and the Dauphin are performed with wit and charm. She is persuasive and beguiling and not intimidated by the powerful. It is Joan the existential hero or maybe the career woman. Act Two repeats these shifts in focus: Joan is martyr with the Tribunal, pathetic victim of sexual harassment in prison, career soldier with Captain La Hire, and saint with her renunciation of her confession of faith and her affirmation of self.
Eclipse's labyrinthine production of THE LARK is, in the end, a theatrical experience that neither soars nor sings.
--Sandra Marie Lee
|
