“Non-binary finery”: I would count it worth going to I, Joan for that phrase alone. To see and hear it translated into movement, shape, colour, sound and gesture is to be part of a remaking of the stage, an explosion of new life.
Charlie Josephine’s play was attacked before it had been seen for depicting Joan of Arc as non-binary. I have no difficulty about the peasant saint declaring she cannot think of herself as a girl, when the play is obviously speculative rather than meticulously historical. Particularly since Isobel Thom – forthright and natural, they graduated from drama school two days before going into rehearsal – makes their pronouncements with such a sense of exploration. Joan’s calls to arms are candid and fiery, but not prescriptive.
