Saint Joan (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Although it’s a relief to experience a phlegmatic instead of a violent Joan, it’s also a perplexity because the choice robs her of psychology. A hero and genius she may be, but somehow also inert...Still, when the play reaches its tragic sixth scene all that withholding pays off...If the production as a whole made up for the diminished dramatics with ample attention to its intellectual grandeur, it might even have seemed bracingly modern. Instead it just seems modest."
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"Shaw’s urbane determination to give every man his say shifts the play’s focus from its central girl for long stretches of prolix philosophical and legal badinage; Daniel Sullivan’s baggy, plainly designed revival is nearly three hours long and feels it, right up to Shaw’s quirky and deflating coda. Despite a capable cast...'Saint Joan' doesn’t rise to meet the contemporary energy of youthful protest with which it coincides. It flickers with intelligence but doesn’t burn."
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"A sentimental, flattening approach that renders Joan dead in the water before she ever reaches the fire...in Sullivan’s positively inert revival...Shaw’s a tricky playwright—cantankerous and proudly verbose—but he’s also a ferocious wit...But if your first experience of Shaw or his Joan is Sullivan’s tepid production and its disappointingly soft starring turn by Rashad, you could be forgiven for writing this vigorous play and its fascinating playwright off as a collective bore."
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"Even when done well, 'Saint Joan' is a slog. And since MTC's revival isn't done very well, it's even more of a slog than usual...Rashad certainly possesses the necessary physical presence...But she never quite gets a handle on the role...Shaw's play is more academic than dramatic, largely consisting of indigestibly windy philosophical debates and monologues...In this visually monotonous, static production, you come away feeling that the dialogue would be much better read than heard."
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"The 1923 vintage of Shaw’s play hardly shows its age in Pask’s staging or in the loose, slightly winky direction. But color-blind casting and the occasional 20th-century colloquialism feel mostly like modern window-dressing on a story that’s been marinating in the collective psyche for more than half a millennium. And the drawing-room comedy bits don’t do much to build a real emotional investment in Joan or her cause...It delivers the saint and the symbol."
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"Smart, stylish, and engaging...Rashad steps into the starring role in a blaze of glory and claims it as her own...Shaw never goes for the didactic slam-dunk, even when the angels are on his side. Instead he revels in the complexity of issues, motives and agendas in a dialectic that’s weighty even as it crackles with wit...In a handsome production, Sullivan deftly directs his first-class, deep-bench cast with subtle shadings of doubt and wonder."
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"Condola Rashad is one of the most charismatic actors on the New York stage, but...she is by no means a classical actor. Her voice is neither resonant enough nor sufficiently varied in tonal color to allow her to speak Shaw’s etched dialogue compellingly...While I wish that Mr. Sullivan’s baldly straightforward production were more theatrically daring, the play comes through with bright clarity and makes, as always, a thought-provoking impression."
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"Directed by Daniel Sullivan with an easy flow that appears to modernize the 1923 play and keep all that Shavian verbiage moving at a smart clip...Rashad’s Joan seems to have the peace of confidence. Still, I wouldn’t have minded a bit more fury before the fire...All is forgiven onstage (and for the most part, off) by the long play’s final scene, when Shaw reassembles even his dead characters 25 years after Joan’s burning, in a playful, ghosty, dreamy encounter of reconciliation."
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