steven gomez on mother of the maid

I particularly like this piece on Mother of the Maid, playing at Pacific Theatre through Oct 5. A thoughtful reflection on the play as much as a consumer report, this is the sort of review I treasure - one that enhances my appreciation of the piece as I recollect it, an opportunity to think back on a rich experience and have it deepen.

As Strong as Death:
Mother of the Maid at Pacific Theatre

by Steven Gomez
etcetera

There are some complicated saints in the official canon lists. Among them is Joan of Arc, the French teenager who, if she lived today, would be labelled a religious extremist for proclaiming God had commanded her to go forth and slaughter the English. No doubt many a tourist who’s tried to ride the Tube feels the same way, but they’re not so fanatic as to do it. Joan is a complicated part of Christian history, one that tends to offend modern sensibilities when we consider her in the abstract.

So imagine what it was like to be her mother; to consider Joan not in the abstract, but as part of your own body; to have always the awareness of the umbilical cord that binds you irrevocably together, even to the stake.

Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid, receiving its Canadian premiere at Pacific Theatre this fall, makes that imaginative leap and then some. The modern style of dialogue is at first a bit jarring for those used to the elevated diction of a typical period piece, but it keeps us firmly out of abstractions and lets us feel the complicated reality.

Joan (Shona Struthers) tells her mother Isabelle (Anita Wittenberg) about her visions of St. Catherine as though they were having the Talk, or even as though she were coming out, and we at once know this could be our family. Someone breaking the mold is difficult for any family to take. And, as usual, the mother is the rock on which everyone stands.

What takes more strength: to march an army into battle against overwhelming odds, or to walk three hundred miles in the mud just to see your daughter at court? To let the enemy execute you as a martyr, or to bathe your daughter for the last time in her prison cell, giving her the news from home, before they take her away? By the curtain call, I had no doubt which of these women was the real martyr.

We know, of course, where the story goes. Tragedies are not known for their plot twists. But here the tragedy is not Joan’s but Isabelle’s, who is chained to the “Maid of Orléans” not by faith in her miracles or her mission, but by her own will and love. Love, says the Bible, is as strong as death. It’s a chain that cannot be broken by anything but fire, and truly not even then. It’s what gives Isabelle her strength and even her reason for being; it pulls her through the narrative and she submits with disarming matter-of-factness. She knows what love is and doesn’t balk at its demands.

The whole cast does a fine turn, with honest performances of relatable characters, and the most important role of all is also the best. Wittenberg fully realizes Isabelle’s emotional scope as she’s thrown around by “God and his bloody plans”, reminding us from beginning to end that a saint’s piety doesn’t hold a candle to a mother’s devotion. And as she screams her daughter’s name for the last time, we know with absolute assurance that she is the one being burned alive.

Mother of the Maid is a grand opening to Pacific Theatre’s season, running until October 5. Tickets are available at the PT website