Finally got around to seeing "I Joan."
I don't know about all the politics of it, or how the Globe advertised or spoke about the production, but my experience of this from the pit is that it is the most entertaining show of the Michelle Terry era, on a par with "Nell Gwyn," as far as original plays go. I absolutely loved it!
Some spoilers follow. . .
Like Henry VIII or Cromwell or any famous figure, I really don't think this play dents Joan of Arc and her legacy one little bit. There is simply no way that the historical Joan of Arc turns from a female into trans because of this production, simply because Joan of Arc is too well known a figure to be altered by any representation at this point, and will be the subject and object of a billion different interpretations in future.
Nor do I think this is a piece that advertises or promotes anybody adopting a lifestyle or whatever. It is just a liberal plea to allow everyone to get on with their own thing without being persecuted for it.
The play certainly isn't anti-female, as the Joan in this play's most controversial assertion, and the one that gets her the most blowback in the plot, is that she experiences "God" as female, using the "she" pronoun to describe "God," not "he" or "they" for that matter.
All that said, what the experience of this production is actually like (for me, anyway) is a propulsively driven, hilarious comedy drama with an infectious joy for simply being alive.
It is about characters sliding down a massive wooden slide from an impossibly high height, which is both propulsively exciting to watch but also evokes nostalgic playful childlike wonder and a hankering back to the joys of very big slides
It is about Jolyon Coy's Dauphin acting the child, at times parading around in underpants, evoking for me Oliver Chris's amusingly over-emotional Duke Orsino from the National's "Twelfth Night," but with even more infantile comic precision, such that I was belly-laughing.
It is about the urgency of large wind instruments and insistent percussion, such that the war scenes, evoked by thrilling dancing, are some of the most vigorous and energising that I've seen.
It is about Isabel Thom giving a magnificent central performance, in their professional debut as Joan, part Leslie Caron, part street poet, part athlete, all infectious joyous engagement with plot and action.
It is about a helium-fuelled Adam Gillen going pink in the face as he overheats from the pressure of his repressed identity as a callow courtier to become someone who explodes with passion through the catalyst of Joan's open agency
This play is so funny, such moment to moment fun, it somehow even makes Joan's downfall enjoyable by its comic depiction of religious persecution carried out by rigidly robed religious figures wobbling like weebles (but they don't fall down), vibrating more furiously every time Joan says something even slightly controversial.
If there is a flaw to this production, it is that Joan's speeches are cleverly written to fit both historical facts as well as to speak to trans identity, and sometimes that duallism is lost, and you just hear a speech about identity, when you expect a speech about even more than that.
But overall, I think this production is glorious, the first production I've seen of Terry's era to match Emma Rice's love and joy in humanity as a whole.
It's wonderful, and deserves a life beyond October 22. 4 and a half stars from me.