Anyone attempting to provide an updating of the story of Joan of Arc faces one hot dilemma. How do you create the contemporary parallel of the character’s very real fear of being burned at the stake?
In Joan Schenkar’s progressive, postmodern drama, “Burning Desires,” receiving its Chicago premiere from the Defiant Theatre Company, the fire that threatens to engulf this protofeminist historic heroine can be found at the end of cigarettes. Everyone who surrounds Joan — but not Joan herself — smokes like a chimney. Except we’re in rainy Seattle, where sodden matches are merely a fact of everyday life.
All this perhaps needs some explanation. “Burning Desires” sets the Joan of Arc narrative in the 1950s. Young Joan Dark is a teenager whose life is changed forever when she hears the voices of — and receives visitations from — beatific versions of Gertrude Stein, Marlene Dietrich, Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson. These iconoclastic feminist saints tell young Joan to stick up for herself against her father (a particularly nasty doctor) and her brothers, who have incestuous attacks on their dirty little minds.
By the end of the drama, which is told in flashback form by self-narrating adult Joan, Schenkar has set up an almighty conflict. On Joan’s side are The Bonfire Girls, a group of young teenage women with arsonist tendencies. On the side of the patriarchal establishment are The Boy Scouts, who would like nothing better than to see Joan burn, both metaphorically and literally.
There are other things burning around here, including Joan’s newfound libido, even thought the saints insist on some limits to the fun. With boyfriend Gilles De Rais dispensing unselfish sexual favors, Joan has a lot of fire on her mind. And Schenkar has her broader metaphor.
The Defiant Theatre approached this interesting script with a typically high-intensity concept. Linda Gillum’s production has provoked considerable controversy, not least because Defiant pursued a tobacco company to be a sponsor of the show.
Camel had initially agreed to provide all of the cigarettes used by the actors in the show, along with a cash grant that a Defiant representative said last week to have been in the “low four figures.” But following publicity generated by a Tribune article on the proposed sponsorship deal, Camel pulled out of the project. So Schenkar’s references to competing brands of cigarettes were left intact (instead of changed to references to Camels), and Defiant proceeded, defiantly, under its own financial steam.
When you see the play, it’s surprising that any tobacco company would have even considered getting involved. Schenkar is using smoking — or more specifically, fire — as a metaphor with a very wide range of meanings but none of them having much to do with the pleasures of tobacco use. And while the constant puffing is a useful 1950s motif, it’s only the metaphors that are really smokin’.
All that said, this remains a very interesting contemporary play with serious intellectual heft. Schenkar draws from the same stylistic palette as Caryl Churchill and shares a similarly socialist-feminist sensibility.
The main flaw with Gillum’s very imaginative but overly fragmented production is that it is paced far too slowly and has too many blackouts that unnecessarily chop up the action. Given such a complex text, Defiant’s usual clever tricks seem unnecessary.
But there is some very decent acting work on display, especially from Kristin Goodman and Cherise Silvestri as the two Joans, with Christopher Johnson providing an amusing cameo as Gilles de Rais. And Gillum’s production is energetic, passionate and smart.
Any long-time observer of the scene will tell you that the Defiant crowd can often be their own worst enemies, especially when it comes to dealing with the media, but there’s no doubting this troupe’s stellar theatrical chops.
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“Burning Desires”
When: Through Dec. 12
Where: National Pastime Theatre, 4139 N. Broadway
Phone: 312-409-0585
