Poor Clare
‘How would the life of Saint Clare of Assisi have played out if she was a Valley girl?’ is probably not a question you’ve ever asked yourself. But US playwright Chiara Atik answers it very entertainingly in her Stateside fringe hit Poor Clare.
There is more than a hint of seminal ‘90s high-school flick Clueless to Atik’s play, which begins with Arséma Thomas’s stratospherically privileged Italian noblewoman gossiping in an American accent with her servants, to highly amusing effect: all ‘super cute!’ and ‘you guys!’ and liberal handwringing over the ethics of the Crusades. The language is so aggressively modern that it feels like a contemporary retelling of the story – as Clueless is a reworking of Austen’s Emma – even though it’s technically a period drama set in 13th century Italy.
It’s certainly liberated from the baggage of historical accuracy, meaning it essentially comes across as a work about activism: for all the goofy humour of the dialogue, it’s a play about a rich kid with a good heart being inspired to renounce her privilege and do good in this world.
Atik and director Blanche McIntyre map the journey well: Clare is at first scandalised when she hears of Francis, a wealthy cloth merchant’s son who has scandalised the town by stripping off in front of the local bishop as a protest against inequality. But she can’t get the idea of what he did out of her head and goes to meet the wry, nerdy friar. She is touched by his matter-of-fact care for the poor and casual...