Poor Clare

by Chiara Atik

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 7 August 2025

Blanche McIntyre directs Arsema Thomas as Clare, Freddy Carter as Francis, Anushka Chakravarti as Beatrice (Clare's sister). Hermione Gulliford as Ortolana (Clare's mother), Liz Kettle as Peppa and Jacoba Williams as Alma (servants in the household), and George Ormerod as a beggar in Chiara Atik's exploration of the career of St Clare of Assisi.

In a series of short scenes (managed with confidence and aplomb by ASMs in costumes as further servants in Clare's family household) we see Clare develop from being the typical product of a prosperous family with expectations of social standing and a marriage of convenience, to becoming a follower of the extraordinary path laid out by St Francis. 

Clare is sassy and opinionated, but completely sheltered from the the vicissitudes of life: when she and her sister are accosted by a beggar they scream in fright and run off as quickly as possible. It is only after encountering the newly scandalous Francis that she begins to rethink her priorities, though the lessons in absolute charity and renunciation of privilege are not easy to learn or to live out. Beatrice finds sharing a bed with a sister who has decided to wear a hair shirt profoundly uncomfortable; impulsive gifts to servants cause confusion in the household; attempts to run a 'clothing drive' for the poor are a bit ham-fisted. Clare is appalled that Francis will not act as a go-between to distribute the clothes she, her family and their friends have collected, and then she has to face the fact that well-meaning charity is not always well received by its recipients, because it may not be what they really need.

The play is written in an extremely modern idiom, though dressed in medieval costume. It's deliberately disorienting to hear modern expressions from the mouths of ladies in rich brocades or servant women in homespun, and even more so to have everyone speak in American accents - a deliberate nod to the playwright's origin, and a reminder that the issues facing Clare as a well-to-do person are still with us today: the play closes with an impassioned speech about moral responsibility in the modern world.

Clare's own progress towards her ultimate desire to break with her family and fully embrace Francis's doctrines seems like an exciting adventure in many ways; the growing friendship between the two has an easy familiarity once her initial bafflement subsides. Only at the very end of the play, when Clare asks to be tonsured and realises that Francis does not intend that they shall live in the same place - indeed that he intends to 'enclose' her, effectively sealing her off from the world in which he roams freely - does the full enormity of the step she is taking begin to sink in. We barely have time to register the shock of the disparity between what Francis imagines his male and his female followers are fit for, and there is no time to explore the further career of poor Clare as she becomes the founder of the Poor Clares.

In its own terms though, the play is fascinating, and the next stage of Clare's life is sensibly beyond its scope. Francis himself still seems to be finding his way as his boyish enthusiasms come up against stubborn reality, though he is adept at finding creative solutions (for example, appealing directly to the pope to forestall an unsympathetic local bishop) or in accepting from Clare some modifications to his grandiose plans for decorating a ruined chapel. His authoritative attitude to her future career seems like a harbinger from a different world, after his initial suggestions for what she might think about or do have been couched in rather more modern terms of giving hints rather than commands. 

The next chapter of their lives raises different issues for which the at times irreverent style of this play would hardly be suitable; the appeal to us to rethink our attitude to the poor among us would have been dulled by any attempt to grapple with the austere institution of an enclosed order of nuns.

Intimate Apparel

by Lynn Nottage

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 31 July 2025

Lynette Linton directs Samira Wiley as Esther, a Black New York seamstress, Nicola Hughes as her landlady and employer Mrs Dickson, Faith Omole as her friend Mayme, Kadiff Kirwan as her suitor and husband George, Claudia Jolly as Mrs Van Buren, a wealthy client, and Alex Waldmann as Mr Marks, a Jewish fabric merchant, in Lynn Nottage's play Intimate Apparel, set in 1905 and loosely inspired by the career of her own great-grandmother.

Skilled dressmaking was a respectable occupation for poor women who valued their reputation, and Esther hopes one day to set up a beauty salon using the carefully hoarded savings from her exquisite corset-making, as she is much in demand by the likes of Mrs Van Buren. An alternative source of livelihood is represented by Mayme who works in a brothel. Out of the blue Esther receives a letter from George who is working on the construction of the Panama Canal and has heard of Esther through a mutual acquaintance from the parish church of her childhood home. As she is 35 and fearful of being a lifelong spinster she responds through the good graces of Mrs Van Buren (as she is illiterate herself) and a charming correspondence flourishes as the couple gradually gain confidence in one another. But marriage, when it comes, brings perhaps inevitable disillusionment as Esther loses her hard-won autonomy and George, whose own letter-writing was also aided by someone else, proves less loving than she hoped. A very subdued flirtation with Mr Marks is hemmed in by her shyness and the social customs of his faith, but is channelled through their shared enthusiasm for fine fabrics.

The characters and themes could so easily be stereotypical but Nottage's dialogue is supple and nuanced, the insight into the the appreciation of fabric and style completely assured and convincing, and the situations resonant with carefully observed emotional weight. Esther, the focal point of the play, is long-suffering and often almost inarticulate but Samira Wiley invests her with a quiet steeliness which receives the blows to her expectations with painful grunts more eloquent than wordy outbursts of feeling: it is a superb performance offsetting the worldly wisdom of her landlady, the breezy self-assurance of Mayme or the entitled but unhappy bravura of Mrs Van Buren. Alex Waldmann gives Mr Marks a courteous reticence which ultimately hides a deep disappointment while Kadiff Kirwan's George moves from lyrical correspondent to domineering husband with all-too-plausible ease.

Lynn Nottage has re-imagined her forebear's experience and the cast and creative team have done her proud in bringing it to theatrical life.

A Moon for the Misbegotten

by Eugene O'Neill

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 30 July 2025

Rebecca Frecknall directs Ruth Wilson as Josie Hogan, David Threlfall as her father Phil and Michael Shannon as James Tyrone, with Peter Corboy as Josie's brother Mike and Akie Kotabe as their neighbour T Stedman Harder in Eugene O'Neill's 1957 play about two young people so insecure that they are unable to admit their feelings for one another in any productive way. 

Josie presents a transgressive front to hide her fears, while James tries to avoid his shames and self-loathing through massive alcohol consumption. This being an O'Neill play, alcohol figures prominently not only for James but also for Phil, an embittered Irish-American tenant farmer all too ready to drown his own sorrows and frustrations in drink. James Tyrone is, of course, the name of one of the two sons (and the father) in Long Day's Journey into Night, and though this character is not exactly the same person in the two plays, both share a tortured family history inspired by that of the playwright himself; in A Moon for the Misbegotten both James's parents are already dead.

The challenge is to render these characters believable and interesting despite their verbosity and inebriation, and both Michael Shannon and David Threlfall manage this tricky task with great skill, and in completely different ways: Shannon trying to be tight-lipped but occasionally permitting a despairing giggle; Threlfall clumsy in his movements, and hamming it up to a certain extent because Phil is probably not as drunk as he makes out to be. In the meantime Josie fends off her father's manipulations and warily engages with James Tyrone using a front of almost raucous bravado: her final relinquishment of any relationship with James, couched in rueful good wishes for his future, is painful to witness. Ruth Wilson, known in the past for portraying deeply repressed women with stillness and menace, here demonstrates a more brazen exterior, but the inner pain remains.

The Almeida stage was stripped back to reveal the brickwork at the rear, and most of the stage podium had also been removed to be replaced by dusty wood-floor areas on different levels, with all sorts of farming bric-a-brac - old planks, sheets of metal, implements - lying around: the chaos of the Hogans being both internal and external. With most of the action in the central part of the play taking place during a moonlit night, the atmosphere was almost derelict, and perfectly suited the action. Designers Tom Scutt (set) and Jack Knowles (lighting) made excellent use of the space available.