Word: joans
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...front, as the seconds ticked toward curtain time, the first-night audience fell into a tense and unaccustomed hush. They liked Julie's nerve, but they feared her fate. They remembered, too, the Joans of Katharine Cornell (1936), of Ingrid Bergman (1946) and of Uta Hagen (1951). Could Julie top them? The auguries had been uncertain. "Joan of Arc was put into history," one critic had said grandly, "so that Julie Harris could play the part." However, the play had proved a flop in London with another Joan, and the table talk at Sardi's had it that...
...into a volley of applause. The setting by Jo Mielziner is a striking thing. Instead of painted scenery, he has used a simple cotton scrim that sets the time at eternity, the place at everywhere. The forestage is filled with what looks like a mighty cubistic boulder on which Joan sits pale and still, like a piteous Prometheus in the midst of her tormentors. The tableau breaks, and the trial, which is the metaphor the action moves in, takes its course. In a matter of moments it is clear that the London fiasco is not to be repeated by Producer...
...judges, Joan plays out the great scenes of her life: the coming of the voices, the assignations with angels and the beating she got when her father thought they were men, the political rehearsal with a rural winesack (Theodore Bikel), the advent at Chinon, the brotherhood in arms (Bruce Gordon) and the rich reek of fighting France -stale wine, hot harness -that kept her head clear through the glory and the banners and the blood. Scene follows scene without shift; past follows present follows past as sun follows shadow on a dappled day. As Joan strides through her story...
...Sound of Violins. As the drama was resolved in flames, the first-night audience went up in smoke. From her first speech, Julie Harris had held them, as her Joan was held, in the bright wonder of a visitation. In the power of the English (Christopher Plummer) she sat in the cruel dock, a brave but pathetic young girl; yet as she played her life out on the stage, a beauty of holiness unfolded out of her and beat upon the faces of the crowd like great white wings. They followed the gleam of her sincerity as she led them...
...their typewriters and brought out the violins. "For many years I have treasured the word 'great,' " the Daily News's John Chapman wrote. "This morning it belongs to Miss Harris." The Post's Richard Watts declared that he had "never seen a finer portrayal of Joan," and Walter Kerr of the Trib pronounced her "fiercely, wonderfully believable" in her "dazzling honesty." The Times's Brooks Atkinson called her a "fiery particle" and Joan "her finest, most touching performance...