Shaw's 1923 play about Joan of Arc, the young girl who heard voices of angels in the 15th century and guided the French army to drive the English out of France, is usually as good as the director who can guide the actor in the titular role through a great performance. In his first production for Shaw Festival, Tim Carroll is the splendid director and Sara Topham is the wonderful Joan. A highlight is the production's post cubism monolithic designs by Judith Bowden enhanced by Kevin Lamotte other-worldly lighting. The abstractionism works beautifully for the play's longish discourses between the sacred and the profane. Of all Shaw's plays, this is the one that doesn't cry out as Joan must, "How long, oh Lord, how long," although at nearly three hours (cut from the original four-hour text), we still get the future saint's message loud and clear. What is loudest and clearest are Joan's empowering convictions, and all the wordy confrontations between the persecutors and prosecutors. All of them spoken impressively and never merely recited by a supporting company that manage to appear and disappear almost by magic. It is great to our George III (Tom McCamus) again on stage this time as the crafty Warwick. But it remains for Topham's unsentimentally modernist Joan keep us in the thrall of her unwavering belief. She does and we are.
