BWW Reviews: MOTHER OF THE MAID at Shakespeare & Company

Imagine: you're a peasant woman in 15th century France, and your teenage daughter has taken strange. It seems she's having visions of St. Catherine, who's instructed her to lead the French army to victory over the invading English. In pants. And armor. Yep: you call her Joanie, but we know her as Joan of Arc.

That parenting challenge is the jumping off point for Jane Anderson's smart new play MOTHER OF THE MAID, having its world premiere at Shakespeare & Company in the Berkshires, with legendary Founding Director Tina Packer in the title role.

The trajectory of the tale is tragic, inevitably. And, truly, Anderson's script offers heart-wrenching moments for both mom and dad, who love their daughter and each other with great fierceness, before the final curtain falls. Yet the show is far from lugubrious; it's hip and witty and a profound exercise in empathy across the centuries.

This is largely due to the narrative voice provided by St. Catherine (Bridget Saracino), glowing in white satin and gold, but given to current colloquialism. She's a saint for all seasons and centuries, it appears, and now, she's talking straight to us. After Joanie and her stolid mum first face off about the prophesied future, Catherine starts the next scene with chipper irony: "Okay, that went well!"

At Shakespeare & Company, the aesthetic is all about marrying text to emotional authenticity. When done well this produces agile actors who project thought clearly, never getting stuck in one mood for long; and they make this look simple. Anne Troup as Joan is luminous and unapologetic as she drags her family away from the life they expect. Nigel Gore is utterly believable as a loving dad pushed well beyond what any of us would ever want to witness for our children. He and Packer have onstage chemistry born of years of working closely together. Our sympathies are firmly with the two of them as the tale unfolds. Longtime company members Jason Asprey (Packer's son) and Elizabeth Aspenlieder join newcomer Nathaniel Kent in providing supporting performances that offer specificity about how priests, the court, and Joanie's brother Pierre respond to the unfolding national drama and family disaster.

Design always takes second place to text at Shakespeare & Company, and is usually deliberately simple and suggestive. MOTHER OF THE MAID is staged in the smaller of the two indoor spaces on the company's campus in Lenox, Massachusetts. The set is dominated by a large hinged golden triptych that, when closed, suggests peasant furniture. Costumes are by Govane Lohbauer, whose work is always period accurate and character driven: the clothes work beautifully without being fussy.

Director Matthew Penn keeps the action moving across the two acts, relying on the actors' skill to draw us through the barrier of history into a fresh appreciation of what happens to human beings caught up in vicious whirlwinds of religion and politics. His director's note rightly references people of our time: Nigerian schoolgirls, Parisian cartoonists. But it is playwright Jane Anderson who has found a way to bring fresh perspective to a familiar tale. Here's hoping this script finds many more productions, as it deserves.

photo by Enrico Spada

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