Saint Joan

by Bernard Shaw

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 15 February 2017

Josie Rourke directs Gemma Arterton as Joan, Fisayo Akinade as the Dauphin, Richard Cant as Poulegny and de Stogumber, Hadley Fraser as Dunois, Jo Stone-Fewings as Warwick, Niall Buggy as the Archbishop, Rory Keenan as the Inquisitor and Elliot Levey as Cauchon in a production designed by Robert Jones.

Shaw's play, written in 1923, not long after Joan was canonised in 1920, uses material gleaned from historical sources close to the events of Joan's life and trials to present a strong-willed and forceful woman undone by the political realities of her time - a picture also of his general vision of the individual struggling to assert the best of humanity against often overwhelming odds.

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 15 March 2016

Dominic Dromgoole directs Tim McMullan (Prospero), Phoebe Pryce (Miranda), Dharmesh Patel (Ferdinand), Pippa Nixon (Ariel) Fisayo Akinade (Caliban), Trevor Fox (Stephano) and Dominic Rowan (Trinculo) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

A play which starts on a boat engulfed by a terrifying storm, and continues entirely with scenes on an island, might seem a tall order for an intimate candle-lit space with a highly decorated  wooden screen at the back of the stage and no sense of the natural world about it. However, the storm was brilliantly staged in semi-darkness, with crew and passengers careering across the stage in unison as if the whole edifice were tilting with the waves. The only questionable gambits were to have a large stylised picture of a storm displayed, with Prospero in front of it with his staff, before the action began, and to have Ariel swinging on a lantern above during the storm itself. This weakened the important revelation in the second scene that the storm, so realistically presented, is in fact only a concoction of Prospero's art.