Shaw’s Saint Joan was an upstart Catholic heroine who was "really the first Protestant martyr", a woman who abandoned petticoats because they got in the way of her mission, and who "objected to foreigners on the sensible ground that they were not in their proper place in France".

Julia Pascal’s new theatre piece, second in the New End’s Jewish season, is a dream play on the same subject, prompted by her personal experience of French xenophobia and her alarm at the upsurge of nationalism under the flag of Le Pen.

She recruits Joan to the cause of tolerance and humanity, setting her heroine against a remarkable sweep of world history, wittily highlighting the paradoxes and culminating in the Parisian National Front rally of 1995.

One of three stage figures, Joan herself is here embodied by the young and slender French actress Laure Smadja, making her London stage debut as a childlike waif with tearful, tragic eyes. But by a process of reincarnation the Maid is also a black East Ender -- a Jewish Caribbean girl who believes that Joan’s mantle and mission have fallen on her.

This character is played with wit and shining intelligence by two splendid actresses, Yonic Blackwood and Abi Eniola, who share the role of a young woman with a divided soul.

Barely 90 minutes in length, the play exerts a powerful grip using the simplest of means. The Hampstead premiere will be followed by further performances in Paris and Lille, given in both English and French versions by the bilingual cast.

John Thaxter
The Stage
April 3, 1997