La Pucelle
Oval House Theatre, London

Dolan Cummings

At the end of La Pucelle I was slaughtered along with the rest of the audience by the cast, and in this review I am tempted to return the favour. But that would be to fail to learn from what happened.

In the event, La Pucelle is more embarrassing than enlightening, but there are some genuinely interesting ideas at the heart of the play. If anything the problem is that Powdermonkey try too hard to impress the audience, and end up distracting us from the story. The use of the audience as unwilling participants actually works unusually well, but it doesn't gel with the dreamlike narrative and obscure choreographic symbolism that actually drives the the play forward (with or without the audience).

The basic premise is to look at the story of Joan of Arc (La Pucelle) through the prism of contemporary concerns about child soldiers. Rather than seeing Joan as a war hero and a religious icon, we are invited to see her alternately as an abused victim of war, and as a brutal war criminal. One of the interesting ideas at the heart of the play is that the contemporary 'cycle of violence' theory of abuse and conflict makes it impossible to make moral judgements about such things. Unfortunately, their own awkward theatrical language makes it equally impossible for Powermonkey to explore this idea in any depth.

While Joan herself speaks only in childish chatter and then brutalised profanities, and the other soldiers merely grunt and slaver (literally), the rebel leader is allowed flashes of insight. First he observes that when you destroy someone's life, leaving them only with raw existence, they will take anything you have to offer. This is why armies are always able to recruit even in the most desperate circumstances. (Rather bravely, the play suggests that war can be fun when you're at the right end of an AK-47.)

Later, though, the rebel leader observes with frustration that there is something different about Joan. Somehow she has not been reduced to just another disposable child soldier: instead, she is a leader. The play sheds little light on the reason for this: Joan is followed about the stage by her dead parents making the sign of the cross, perhaps implying that divine inspiration and/or a loving upbringing have marked Joan out as a unique individual, but who knows? The last interesting idea is the possibility that it is precisely Joan's final vestiges of humanity that allow her to become the monster that she does become, but this is barely explored at all.

La Pucelle presents us with an intriguing premise, but Powdermonkey fail to develop it much further on stage than it is in the director's notes in the programme. Rather than the actors, it is the audience that is left to fill in the blanks.

Till 28 February 2004