‘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 revulsion at extreme wealth (even if she is amusingly aghast at his tonsure).
And so she sets out to turn guilt at her privilege into actually doing something, and if that sounds overly earnest then the inherent preposterousness of a pair of medieval saints chatting as if they’re the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills gets you over the threshold.
Bridgerton star Thomas is a delight as a good natured little rich girl Clare, who has known nothing else and is taken aback to suddenly discover she doesn’t even really like her cocooned life. And Freddy Carter is a hoot as a geeky Francis of Assisi who palpably starts to freak out at the prospect of actually having a disciple.
It runs out of steam. A final monologue in which Clare addresses the modem world directly is really extraneous by that point, and her renouncing of materialism feels too frictionless – once she starts down the path it’s obvious where it’ll end up. The matter of faith also feels muddled. In transposing Francis and Clare to now, Atik mostly makes their drastic lifestyle change a secular matter… but she can’t ignore their religion entirely and it’s left dangling awkwardly in the air rather than properly addressed. And, at the risk of demanding that Atik write Catholic saint slash fiction, I’d argue that the structure and tone she has chosen means it feels weird that no sexual tension between Francis and Clare is even jokily raised. Their relationship feels a little too neat.
Still, it’s so entertaining that you can indulge Atik not having a perfect ending – the audacity of the venture is enough to make a bumpy landing worthwhile.
