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Girls who are determined to wear the trousers must, eventually, feel the heat ; George Bernard Shaw's history play gains in complexity from its imperfect fit with our 21st-century issues regarding religious fanatics and dress codes ++ Theatre

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From: The Independent on Sunday
Date: 20070715
Author:Kate Bassett

Saint Joan

NT Olivier

LONDON

Glass Eels

Hampstead

LONDON

W omen are f i g h t i n g their way to the top of the pile. Of course, the twist in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan is that his dogged action heroine ends up being burnt at the stake by infuriated patriarchs. They punish the Maid of Orleans not just for insisting the voices in her head are celestial rather than satanic, but also for emancipating herself and believing she is on a mission with a God-given right to wear the trousers (both metaphorically and literally). In her final scene she looks down, supposedly from heaven, ...

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