INTERVIEW: The enduring legacy of Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan’
Photo: Adam Chanler-Berat and Condola Rashad star in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by Boneau Bryan-Brown with permission.
George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan is one of the most respected historical dramas to ever grace the stage. The new Broadway production from Manhattan Theatre Club, directed by Daniel Sullivan, brings an honest integrity to the historical proceedings in 15th-century France, but also a renewed lens to how this central female character might speak to today’s world.
Condola Rashad, a Tony nominee this year, plays Joan of Arc, a young woman who unites French resistance fighters against the British and gains a certain stature in Europe. She also troubles the elite, both religious and secular, and this ultimately leads to her undoing and horrible execution.
One of the pivotal characters in the play is the Dauphin, Charles VII, a royal who does not earn much respect (like Joan) at the beginning of the play. In fact, his regal lineage is questioned, and his youth and inexperience are mocked. As the drama progresses, Joan secures him a proper spot on the throne, and his character begins to change.
The Dauphin is a layered role, one fit for Adam Chanler-Berat, an actor best known for Next to Normal, Peter and the Starcatcher and Amélie, a New Musical. Recently, Chanler-Berat exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox about his role and Joan of Arc’s influential story. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What attracted you to this role in Saint Joan?
Shaw said that there are no villains in this play. He wrote complicated characters. No one is all good or all bad — Charles included. I often get cast as guys that are maybe a little closer to the good than the bad end of the spectrum, so an opportunity to play someone somewhere in the middle, a man really at war with those two parts of himself, was very appealing.
Your character goes through many changes in the play. How do you see his characterization at the beginning?
Charles starts the play, as Shaw writes, ‘like a rat in a corner.’ Although he is the heir to the throne, he’s at the bottom of the food chain. With the introduction of Joan, we watch him rise, rather quickly, to the top. Thanks to her, he gains an enormous amount of power in a very short time — before he may be ready for it — but it is a real thrill to be able to play an insecure young man thrust into the center of a battle for his life and the life of his country, and to figure out how he rises to the occasion.
Did you have to do any research on the historical figures in the play?
I did a lot of reading before we started rehearsal. Because it was a very politically complicated time, it felt important to have context. Eventually you have [to] throw away all that research and just play what Shaw wrote on the page.
Several of your scenes, including the final one, are with Condola Rashad. What’s it like to work with her on stage?
Condola is a force of nature. She’s my favorite kind of performer, the kind where looking in her eyes means you’re in the scene with her. You don’t have a choice in the matter, and she leads our company with generosity and confidence, and sets the bar enormously high.
In 2018, what do you believe are the takeaways, or the lessons learned, from Saint Joan?
The line from the play that comes to mind is ‘this beautiful earth, when you be ready to receive thy saints.’ It closes the show, and like a bullet, it pierces through time, from 1923 when Shaw wrote it, to now. It is a question I wonder about every time I hear it.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Saint Joan continues at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
