University of Virginia Library

Virginia Players Score Big With 'Lark'

By Flora Johnson

Last week's Cabell Hall production
of "The Lark," by Jean
Anouilh, required as much cooperation
from the audience as
from the actors if it was to be
enjoyed. With that cooperation, it
was well worth seeing.

Most notably, the audience's
participation in the production was
required by the stance Anouilh
takes with regard to his leading
character, Joan of Arc. One is,
in fact, eventually required to decide
whether or not one finds
that stance intellectually offensive.

This play is not to be confused
with the more commonly produced
one by George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw's butchy, country-girl St.
Joan is thought of as being
iconoclastic. But Anouilh, when in
his program notes to the French
production he speaks of "that
weary, undernourished little girl,
haggard and thin" and then adds
"yes I know she was a big healthy
girl, but I couldn't care less,"
also throws a challenge to his
audience.

Romance Important

That is, he adamantly affirms
that the romance of Joan is more
important than the reality, that the
truth of her story is less important
than that men have been willing
to give themselves to the lie.

The consequences of his commitment,
both for the content and
for the actual writing of the play,
are serious.

He attempts at certain points
to make his play an idyll of the
death of innocence. Thus he deserts
the usual chronologies for a flashback
technique which contrasts, as
Joan says, "the beginning, when
I hear my Voices" with "the end,
when my King and all my friends
have deserted me, when I
doubt and recant and the Church
receives me again."

But he fails because he is in
love with Joan, and insists that it
be from a distance. His program
notes declare that he will not
"attempt to explain the mystery
of Joan," but the result is that
he never knows here character
either. Anouilh loves her; he has
never bothered to listen to her.
When she speaks, she speaks all
the different lines that men since
her time have, in their imaginations,
heard her speak, but with
no unifying thread.

"Playboy" magazine once ran a
cartoon which depicted the filming
of "Spartacus"-Kirk Douglas
with his studiously ragged band of
men; masses and masses of troops,
surrounding them utterly; and the
director saying "All right, Kirk
sweetie-let's take it from your
line, 'Follow me! They can't stop
men who want to be free!"

The Cause

One must be aware, if painfully
so, of the irony which makes that
cartoon amusing. Yet one must
also be aware that Joan of Arc
discovered the power of a man
who has committed his life to a
cause (one hesitates to discuss
the nature of the cause, when the
word nationalism is so often
coupled with the word pernicious,
and when Uncle Sam is busy making
men safe to be Americans).
Anouilh evokes the image beautifully
when he has Joan explain
to the Dauphin Charles that
"when you're as scared as you
possible can be, then the worst is
over, and you can do what you
have to do." It is certainly remarkable
that she succeeded.

Coronation Of Charles

To Anouilh, her victory, the
coronation of Charles, is the high
point of her story. To Anouilh,
this is how she should be remembered;
and he finished his
play with that image, which he
calls in his stage directions "a
beautiful illustration from a school
prize."

Yet something prevents the story
of Joan of Arc from becoming another
Kirk Douglas-epic. That element
is the theme which Anouilh
first states and then neglects-her
desertion, her loss of innocence,
and her discovery that she can
live courageously and meaningfully
in spite of that loss.

The Cabell Hall production of
"The Lark" mutilated that theme.
As this review has tried to make
clear, any major faults in the
Virginia Player's production originated
in the script itself. Nevertheless,
their injudicious editing
(or possibly a poor choice of translations)
left less time and emphasis
to the execution and to the events
immediately preceding it than did
at least one available version.

For example, their use of slides
projected onto three screens, which
elsewhere in the play was extremely
effective, was used to encapsulate
the execution scene by turning it
into a slide show. As a result,
the entire scene where Joan demands
a cross and is given two
sticks tied together by an English
soldier was omitted.

Struggling Actress

The most notable lapse lay in
Marion Eisenberg's portrayal of
Joan. Admittedly, she was struggling
with a nearly impossible part.
Yet one can wish that the charm
which she displayed in many of
her facial expressions had replaced
the fixed mock-angelic smile she
assumed for the rest of the time.
One can wish that she had attempted
boyishness with movements
which were powerful rather
than with the hesitant bouncing
around that she often affected.

The rest of the characters, who
have not had the misfortune to
have been adored, are well-written
and were, with certain exceptions,
well-played. Michael Grigsby
evoked the strident, devil-ridden
Promoter without any of the overacting
which could so easily have
crept in, as did Wesley Simpers
as the Inquisitor whose enemy is
man. C. Linwood Duncan on
several occasions stole the trial
scene from an anemic Joan with
his portrayal of Cauchon, the man
who can be kind because he has
known compromise. Robin Mason
was a charming, exceptionally real,
Dauphin.

The exceptions were the
Dauphin's mistress, played by
Martha Villmoare, and the Little
Queen, played by Tina Sheppard.
Miss Sheppard merely copied Miss
Villmoare's indifferent acting,
when her character was supposed
to have been a contrast. To steal
a political slogan, one could say
that the poor Dauphin was
confronted with an echo, not a
choice.

For all that one may intellectualize
over Anouilh's rendering of
the story of Joan, the fact remains
that it is equally as important
for a member of an
audience to communicate with the
ideas of the author as for him to
reinforce his own philosophies.

Too often audiences seem to
feel that they can come to a play,
relax on the back of their collective
spines, and be entertained.
But a play that is based on illusions-as
most are, in varying
degrees-requires of its audience
that it participate in them.

Any actor is aware that he
must never break character, or
stare into the audience, or do anything
which would break the
tenuous rapport between those
individuals and the reality of the
play. In this particular case it
is equally important that the
audience not break faith.

Certainly, a few hours' willing
suspension of disbelief, even if
one must intellectualize afterwards,
are the least one can give to the
little maid of Domremy.