Following St Francis
Clare “Lots of people sleep on the floor Beatrice! I’m doing what thousands of people do every single day”
Beatrice “Thousands of people do not sleep on the floor next to a perfectly good bed, that is not something thousands of people are doing every night.”
I have just read a fascinating story set in 2024 of a group of Poor Clare nuns in Belorado, Northern Spain who have been excommunicated by the Pope. On hearing that there were plans by the bishop to change the locks on two of their properties, two nuns rushed 85 miles by car and got in by a back door. Eight hundred years before in 1212 is set the play at the Orange Tree, Poor Clare about the founder of the order of nuns in Assisi, sworn to absolute poverty and until recently who went barefoot.
We are in Assisi where the ideas of a young man, the son of a silk merchant, Francis (Freddie Carter) was developing his ideas about dedicating himself to the poor by giving up everything he owned and living on alms donated to the church.
A rich teenager Clare (Arsema Thomas) meets the charismatic Francis and herself starts to adopt Francis’s way of life. Clare of course opens in the play as a spoilt young woman obsessed with fashion, hairstyles and luxuries like velvet and silk clothes. She ends the play wearing rough sackcloth, a hairshirt, next to her skin and barefoot.
We see the servants (Liz Kettle and Jacoba Williams) spending hours on the elaborate plaited and hooped hairstyles of Clare and her sister Beatrice (Anushka Chakravarti). Their mother Ortolana (Hermione Gulliford) is concentrating on their marriage prospects. What is unusual about this play is that the American author Chiara Atik has chosen for the youth of Assisi to speak as modern Californian teenagers. The author says that she has no idea how they spoke in Umbria in the 1200s and didn’t want to write some faux sounding medieval dialogue and she wanted people to enjoy a comedy. The result is of course laughter at the unexpected language.
When Clare first meets Francis she compliments what he is wearing and later will comment on his new haircut with its ugly bald circled tonsure. So what we have here is the juxtaposition of extreme need and poverty and godliness with fashion and superficiality lit large by anachronistic and incongruous language.
Eleanor Bull’s set is appropriate and her costumes illustrate the wealthy lifestyle of Clare and her family with sumptuous fabrics. Blanche McIntyre again shows her diverse ability as a consistent director and commands a fine cast. We leave behind the thirteenth century to think about how we actually behave in the face of poverty today.
Editor of TheatreVibe.co.uk
See ABOUT US
Production Notes
Poor Clare
Written by Chiara Atik
Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Cast
Starring:
Freddy Carter
Arsema Thomas
Hermione Gulliford
Jacoba Williams
Liz Kettle
Anushka Chakravarti
George Ormerod
Creatives
Director: Blanche McIntyre
Designer: Eleanor Bull
Lighting Designer: Oliver Fenwick
Sound Director: George Dennis
Information
Running Time: One hour 45 minutes
Booking to 9th August 2025
Theatre:
Orange Tree Theatre
Rail/Tube: Richmond
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Orange Tree
on 16th June 2025