Poor Clare, Orange Tree Theatre review - saints cajole us sinners

What am I, a philosophical if not political Marxist whose hero is Antonio Gramsci, doing in Harvey Nichols buying Comme des Garçons linen jackets, Church brogues and Mulberry shades? It’s 1987 and I do wear it well though…

Chiara Atik’s comedy crosses the Atlantic bearing prizes and venom and could hardly have fetched up anywhere more suited than leafy Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre. A once Lib-Dem / Conservative marginal seat has swung decisively to the former and seems unlikely to swing back rightwards any time soon. In the programme, the playwright says she wants “to challenge us… to take a slightly less passive role as citizens…” What happens next remains to be seen - hand-wringing or all hands on deck? 

I had got into the habit of, en route back to the office after buying lunch in Soho, handing a Berwick Street market orange to a homeless man whose pitch was near the London Palladium. One bitter day, I gave him my coat, as I had a stylish cashmere Jasper Conran one at home. A day or two later, I handed over the usual orange and noticed there was no coat, sold for booze I inwardly winced, judging. Then I realised I was going to a Beaujolais Nouveau party that evening - that was then a thing.

We open on the eponymous Clare, not poor at all, but wealthy with two servants braiding her hair. Soon we meet her flighty sibling, Beatrice, and we discover what two March sisters would be doing if they lived in 13th century Assisi and spoke like Valley Girls. As in Hamilton, the language register suits the characters and offers many opportunities for humour that are gleefully accepted. This is a very funny play!

Clare, pious and clever, is growing up quickly and she’s troubled by the complacency and entitlement best captured by a verse I sang at school along with most of us boomers -

“The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly

And ordered their estate”

(All Things Bright and Beautiful, 1848).

When she meets Francis, a charismatic young man who is (quietly) mad as hell and not going to take this anymore, she is first intrigued, then convinced, and renounces her life of luxury to become a disciple of his and, later, a fellow saint. You're right - there are two ways to read that.. 

In 1988, when Mrs Thatcher’s government cut the higher rate of income tax from 60% to 40% and the basic rate from 27% to 25%, I knew I would have been shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” were I in the Strangers' Gallery, as many Labour MPs did from the Opposition benches. I set up standing orders to the Terrence Higgins Trust and Shelter to donate my unwanted and unmerited windfall to those who needed it. They lasted ten years.

Arsema Thomas (pictured above with Liz Kettle and Jacoba Williams), on her stage debut would you believe, is transfixing in a dream of a lead role. She shines with Clare’s intelligence, she wrestles with her moral dilemmas, she never stops being a teenager, but never strays into reductive entitlement. The writing is extremely careful not to reduce Clare into ‘a rich kid who finds God’ caricature, but it’s still a feat of acting, in this most intimate of spaces, to pull it off. I suspect hers will be a name on a few award nominations lists come the year end.

She gets super support from her witty if superficial sister, played with great comic timing by Anushka Chakravarti and, though limited to a cameo role, Hermione Gulliford, as her mother, nailing a crucial scene late in the 100 minutes run time.  

Hats off (or rather on) for the work of Eleanor Bull on costumes and Chris Smyth on hair and wigs, their outstanding contributions pretty much giving director, Blanche McIntyre, a whole extra character to work with, an opportunity she does not waste. 

Discussing retirement plans with my advisor, I feel guilt as I cynically reduce my tax exposure. I rationalise it by telling myself it’s to give my kids the same chances that the 70s’ and 80s’ State gave me. I realise that were I really to believe that, I wouldn’t need to keep telling myself.

The first of the two problems that almost, but don’t quite, sink the show arrives in the shape of Francis (by the way, it is that one with the animals and Poor Clare was a real person). Freddy Carter can’t find the right balance for his near-namesake - and I suspect it’s because it’s not possible to square the circle. Francis is written as a moral figure, his own disgust at the world driving his decision to retreat and do good works for those involuntarily excluded - he's an inspirational role model. He’s no fire and brimstone preacher, but he’s an iconoclast and, let’s face it, sexy and he knows it. Clare is drawn in by his Svengali-like charm at a vulnerable time in her life - about to be married off into even more wealth - and though he has second thoughts about accepting her devotion and the cost it exacts on her, he doth protest too much methinks. Francis isn’t predatory - at least, that’s what I’ve decided… probably. 

The second problem for the play is the late turn to polemic as Clare, bathed in beatific light, gives a speech very much in and of our time, as a call to arms. It felt an unnecessary coda, an underlining in red ink of points made earlier with wit and wisdom within conventional theatrical discourse. I felt scolded and infantalised rather than empowered - of course, that may merely show that it pushed the right buttons. 

I look at my phone as the Tube carriage is regaled with life stories from those ‘raising’ £17 for a hostel’. I comfort myself by thinking that charity did not solve Dickensian poverty, nor rebuild war-torn Europe, nor lift millions out of misery in China and India - politics did. In my 60s now, I’ve only seen that politics briefly and I wonder if I am salving a liberal’s guilt with a fantasy that’ll never happen.

There’s not much like Poor Clare in town - genuinely funny, deeply moving and fearlessly discomforting in its direct assault on middle class complacency. It did, as the author intended, provoke many thoughts in me and the memories inserted above, but one nagging reflection has grown more and more since the curtain.

Sometimes it’s better not to drink the Kool Aid.

• Poor Clare at the Orange Tree Theatre until 9 August
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk