JOAN OF ARC: INTO THE FIRE (previews)

[ADW111]

What do you mean by "A few strange moments related to virginity"?   How does the play present Joan of Arc herself?   I realize the main character is a rock star, not Joan, but nonetheless the theme is based on her life. 

[jbird5]

Both the French and the English examine her to see if she's a Virgin because only a pure Virgin could talk to God. Neither is explicit, they just pantomime it.

[ADW111]

How else does it portray Joan of Arc? 

[RippedMan]

Is it a proscenium show?

[GreasedLightning]

It blows my mind that with both the success of the Public's past few seasons and the creative team behind this that the buzz has ceased to exist. I haven't heard a single peep about this show since the last post in the thread. What gives?

[macnyc]

Here's my peep. Oy, vey! I saw the matinee today, and I have to agree with the poster who said it was a huge misfire.

On the positive side, the performances are excellent. There are some real standouts in the cast. Jo Lampert as Joan is giving a star turn. Brava! 

The negatives: The score is really subpar. David Byrne, what has happened to you? I am a huge huge fan from way back. He is a genius. How did this score ever happen? It is a huge mediocrity from the first song to the last. The only one that I found the least bit inventive was the one about the parts of the body, which occurs near the end of the show. That had something of a tinge of the flavor of classic Byrne. But even that is a pale shadow of what could have been.

The choreography seemed similarly uninspired. And maybe I'm jaded, but the special effects seemed lacking too. I mean, burning someone at the stake? That should be a huge moment!

Then, another problem was the writing. I found the whole show completely lacking in passion. It should have been way passionate, emotional, compelling! The stakes (bad pun) in this story are so high. A whole nation is at risk. (Sound familiar?) Passion, religion, promises, treachery. Great stuff! But there was not one iota of tension.

I was telling my theater partner, who actually enjoyed the show a lot, that I thought the mark of truly great writing is when we KNOW the outcome of the story, yet it still grips us. When you see 1776, for instance, the action is so filled with tension at the end, when you see the names of the states accumulate on the chalk board, one by one. Will they ratify the Constitution? Willllll they??? Oh, God, will they?

So even though we know Joan is ultimately burned at the stake, we should still be hoping for a better outcome, it seems to me. And then, rats, she does die in the flames. And so do our hopes and dreams for this show. Amen.

 

 

 

[jbird5]

I think David was trying for Hamilton and failed badly.

[neonlightsxo]

Saw it this weekend and truly found it painful. Wished I was elsewhere for 90 minutes.

[little_sally]

I'm still trying to figure this one out. Some of the music is very good, and the cast has excellent voices (especially Jo Lampert) but overall, it's a pretty tedious 90 minutes. There's nothing compelling or exciting about it. Some of the staging was a bit clumsy as well, which is disappointing since Alex Timbers is one of my favorite directors. I also thought the set was too big and ugly.

[little_sally]

I forgot to mention the weird framing device of sorts that never comes back into play. Jo sings "let me be your Joan of Arc" in the opening  and we travel back in time to the 1400s but we never return to it in the end.

[whatever2]

saw this a couple of nights ago, and thought it was the Public's biggest turkey in my 14 years as a member.

i took a friend (who is deeply skeptical of musicals but loves David Byrne) ... he had an interesting take: he thought the show failed because the entire book -- dialogue but especially song lyrics -- were basically written at a third-grade level. "what wasn't treacle was vapid."

little-sally: awesome point about the framing device; a real missed opportunity there.

[macnyc]

It just didn't feel like a passion project to me. When I first saw Fun Home and then, a year later, Hamilton at the Public, those leaped off the stage with originality. Even though both of them are someone else's story, it was evident that the musical writers saw something deep in the materials they were tackling. Joan of Arc, on the other hand, seemed to be a by-the-numbers exercise.

I didn't think Here Lies Love was that deep either, but it was certainly more tuneful and better written than this. Plus it had Fatboy Slim as co-writer. Maybe he contributed more than we realized.

Has David Byrne ever done anything expressly autobiographical? Maybe that's what he needs to do.

 

[neonlightsxo]

Plus it had Fatboy Slim as co-writer. Maybe he contributed more than we realized

 

That's what I've been thinking, too.

[Sally Durant Plummer]

"Let Me Be Your Joan of Arc" (what a bad lyric) was cut from the finale early in previews, along with other beauties like a dress with the word "C*NT" (not censored) on it, a shadow show for when members of the church check to see if Joan is, in fact, a virgin, and most of poor Mare Winningham's part.

[little_sally]

The more I think about it, the more I realize the big problem with this show is that it's format is very much "First this happened, then this happened, then this happened." That is such a huge NO when writing a bio-musical.

[neonlightsxo]

Yup