If no one but Magali Naas (pictured, photo by Jeff Young Photography) and Giles Davies were performing in Jean Anouilh’s The Lark at Gorilla Theatre, this production might be one of the great triumphs of the decade. As Joan of Arc, Naas is luminous: she dominates her scenes with a sweetness and purity that’s almost angelic, almost as ethereal and inexorable as the disembodied voices she claims to hear. French-born herself, Naas is splendid as the storied Maid, demonstrating a talent far beyond even what she showed several seasons ago in Tommy J and Sally at the Studio@620. As Warwick, the Englishman who wants Joan dead and forgotten, Davies is also superb, though in an entirely different way. He seems to have stepped out of the 15th century onto the stage, and when he calls his prisoner “a dirty virgin witch girl,” you have no doubt that he’d dispatch her himself, if Merrie Olde England would let him. Anytime either of these actors is center stage, Anouilh’s play is riveting. What we’re blessed with in both cases is formidable, intelligent, and, most important, persuasive acting. Surely the real Joan and Warwick were something like this.
But
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2010.