In a convent of cloistered Catholic nuns, a baby lies in a wastebasket. She has lived for less than an hour, before being strangled with her own umbilical cord. In another part of the room, her mother, a holy nun, lies unconscious and bleeding, mind and memory in ruins. The pathologists and psychologists and police and lawyers and…and critics will come later, but for now let us take it for what it is: a scene of unspeakable horror, in which evil stands triumphant over good, and God is mocked.
But this is not some iteration of The Exorcist. This is the story of the infant’s mother, the God-drunk Sister Agnes (Zoe Walpole) who is twenty-one years old but will always be a child. It is also the story of the tough-as-nails Mother Superior (Nanna Ingvarsson), who makes it her business to protect this child — and perhaps the convent — from the probing eyes of Dr. Martha Livingston (Felecia Curry), who the Court has appointed to evaluate Agnes’ mental state. And it is Dr. Livingston’s story too; the story of a woman who has turned to science to answer questions that religion has answered inadequately.
Mostly, though, it is a story about miracles. Joan of Arc, an uneducated 16-year-old peasant girl, outgeneraled the best military men of France and England. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who seemed to spring from his mother’s womb with a baton in hand, wrote symphonies at the age of five. Agnes, who never went to school, sings like an angel, and seems to have the power to bring joy from a well of despair.
Agnes, though a spiritual being, is ground down by this carnal earth. The product of a brutal upbringing, she despises herself, refusing to eat and causing gaping wounds to appear on the palm of her hand, seemingly through the power of her own mind. Like Joan, and like any sufferer of dementia praecox, she hallucinates, but her visions are only of more pain and misery.
Agnes of God closes November 24,, 2019. Details and tickets
The central dilemma, of course, is to determine who made Sister Agnes pregnant, and who killed her child. But to the two antagonists, the dilemma plays out differently. To Mother Miriam, it is to keep Agnes out of secular institutions — jail, or a mental institution — where her peculiar gifts would suffocate, and she would die. To Dr. Livingston, it is to extricate Agnes from her medieval surroundings, and into an environment where science can bring her to her best self.
John Pielmeier’s play is forty years old, but the ferocity with which these veteran actors tuck into it will make you forget its rust spots. Ingvarsson, who had a couple of line problems in this early-run show, nonetheless puts on an acting clinic, from the very first line. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” she says, bounding into the room, hand outstretched, chortling at her own joke — and we see at once someone who uses wit to control the situation, having a little joke at the other person’s expense while being all seeming robustness and good cheer. Thirty-four years before the term was ever used, Ingvarsson’s Mother Miriam is a master of soft power.
Dr. Livingstone is traditionally hero or villain depending on where you sit on the faith-science spectrum, but Curry manages to transcend such binary thinking by making her supernally vulnerable. Curry’s Livingstone is no weakling, but she carries weakness with her: she has an Achilles Heart. In seeking to protect Agnes from what she sees as cant and superstition, Livingstone seeks to protect herself; the shadow of the unknown God, which has so flooded Agnes’ life, is on Livingstone’s doorstep, and Curry lets us know it every moment she’s on stage.
Miriam, too, lives with a compromised belief system. We see it in a scene in which she and Livingstone, in a moment of brief comradery, speculate what brands the Saints would have smoked, had tobacco been around in their day. (Director Rick Hammerly imported the scene into the play from the movie, with Pielmeier’s consent). In a few moments, though, Miriam’s thoughts have moved to the absence of Saints in the present day, the clear implication being that God has gone home, and left us alone.
This is why Agnes is so special to her; the young nun seems to be touched by God, in all His glory and horror. We see Agnes, prostate on the floor, calling her body disgusting and her mind and soul inadequate. This is pathological, and Miriam recognizes it, but it is a difference in kind, not degree, from the Christian tradition of mortification of the flesh, or the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18: 9-14), in which the tax collector won God’s approval by recognizing his own sinfulness. Miriam sees in Agnes the treasured modern Saint — not saintly because of good works, but because she was an instrument of the Almighty in the womb, and for every day after that.
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In order to bring that extraordinary thought to life, we need an extraordinary Agnes, and Walpole gives us that. The world utterly confuses her, but she is certain who she is, even though who she is may horrify us — and, sometimes, her. Walpole’s Agnes is not a stupid person, but she is otherworldly; our questions make no sense to her, even as her answers make no sense to us. Her purity is so convincing, and so different from the ambiguity in which Miriam, Livingstone, and the rest of us live, that it seems possible that she is closer to the ineffable than we are, despite all the terrible events. To top all this, Walpole has an extraordinary singing voice (nicely enhanced by Kenny Neal’s good sound design) — so much so that I searched the program, in vain, to find the name of the professional singer whose voiced was dubbed for hers. Walpole — who I last saw playing the role of Vixen in The Klunch’s Adult Entertainment — shows as much range as any actor in Washington.
There are some plot holes — the biggest being how Miriam could imagine that Agnes would remain in the convent, no matter what Livingstone’s conclusions were — and some rust (DNA testing — which was widespread four years after the play debuted — could help establish paternity) but this slam-bang production, under Hammerly’s steady hand, will help you to ignore them until after you get home.
The Catholic Church, now under siege for the sins of its stewards, is not the powerful creature it was when Pielmeier wrote Agnes of God, but the desire to see ourselves as eternal beings continues, and continues to drive our decisions.
Agnes of God by John Pielmeier, directed by Rick Hammerly, featuring Felecia Curry, Nanna Ingvarsson, and Zoe Walpole . Lighting designer: William D’Eugenio . Sound designer: Kenny Neal . Costume designer: Alison Johnson . Set designer: Greg Stevens . Movement choreographer: Jenny Male . Technical director: Jon Townson . Master electrician: Cassandra Saulski . Production assistant: Dar Gazder . Graphic designer: Douglas Shore . Stage manager: Solo HalleSelassie . Produced by Factory 449 at the Anacostia Arts Center . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
(I initially posted this accidentally as a general comment rather than a direct reply to your comment above, so I’ll post it again as a direct reply)
I don’t see how Julian Jaynes’ theory would explain any of this, either for Joan of Arc or Edgar Cayce. Thoughts from the brain’s right hemisphere won’t allow someone with little medical knowledge (like Edgar Cayce) to accurately diagnose illnesses, nor allow a farmer’s daughter with zero military experience (like Joan of Arc) to give advice that allows an army to suddenly win against hopeless odds, much less predict the future as the commanders said she could do. I’m not sure what you meant by “Joan’s special ability to kill people”, since she said she never fought nor killed anyone directly: during the fourth session of her trial (27 February 1431) she said “during assaults I carried the banner, so as to stay out of any killing; and I have never killed anyone.” This is also corroborated by the many eyewitness accounts. And of course it was a defensive effort against an invasion. The English had been launching scorched earth campaigns periodically since 1340, devastating much of France.
I don’t see how Julian Jaynes’ theory would explain any of this, either for Joan of Arc or Edgar Cayce. Thoughts from the brain’s right hemisphere won’t allow someone with little medical knowledge (like Edgar Cayce) to accurately diagnose illnesses, nor allow a farmer’s daughter with zero military experience (like Joan of Arc) to give advice that allows an army to suddenly win against hopeless odds, much less predict the future as the commanders said she could do. I’m not sure what you meant by “Joan’s special ability to kill people”, since she said she never fought nor killed anyone directly: during the fourth session of her trial (27 February 1431) she said “during assaults I carried the banner, so as to stay out of any killing; and I have never killed anyone.” This is also corroborated by the many eyewitness accounts. And of course it was a defensive effort against an invasion. The English had been launching scorched earth campaigns periodically since 1340, devastating much of France.
It sounds to me like you fall somewhat on the religion side of the religion-science debate, at least with respect to Joan of Arc. Many people do, and I understand the argument, although it’s hard for me to credit a supernatural agency to Joan’s special ability to kill people. And I suspect that in the hundreds of years between then and now information may have been suppressed, ignored or forgotten which otherwise might give us a more complete picture of the events. But there’s no doubt that there are unexplained (if not inexplicable) prodigies throughout history. For example, there is Edgar Cayce, the “Sleeping Prophet”, who could diagnose medical conditions well (though not infallibly) while in a deep trance, but was otherwise a medical ignoramus. Cayce died in 1945.
It’s possible, I suppose, that Joan (and Cayce) had medical conditions which were highly unusual and highly functional both. Julian Jaynes, in *The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind* argued that thousands of years ago our brains were organized differently than they are now, and that thoughts and insights which originated in the right hemisphere were expressed in the left, perceiving hemisphere as messages from a hallucinated god. This, Jaynes argued, explained the similarities in mythology (particularly as concerns the gods walking among humans) among widely divergent cultures at the same time. If Jaynes is correct, perhaps people like Joan, Mozart and Cayce were biological throwbacks. (It also suggests that our right hemispheres have some really good stuff for us, if only we had a way to listen to it.)
In any event, that’s why I enjoy stories like *Agnes of God* so much: they leave all possibilities open (for *Agnes*, until the very end — I think). When given an excellent production, as it was here, *Agnes* allows us to speculate while fully enjoying an engaging drama.
Regards,
Tim Treanor
Sure, but for that very reason it’s equally hard to believe that amazingly successful advice could be the result of mental illness. Some of the commanders (the Duke of Alencon, Count of Dunois, etc) said she could predict the future accurately, which is one of the reasons they trusted her advice in the first place. Accurate predictions of the future are not a symptom of schizophrenia. The reason these doctors have rejected mental disorders in her case is because each type of disorder has specific, outwardly noticeable symptoms (usually debilitating) that would have been noticed and likely mentioned by eyewitnesses, while also likely making it difficult for her to take part in a military campaign. E.g., epilepsy has been suggested in her case, but it produces seizures which would make a military campaign difficult and likely would have sparked allegations of demonic possession from the people around her (especially the English guards while she was in prison). Her accusers would have had a field day if they could’ve used seizures as evidence of diabolical possession, but they never mention any seizures in the trial transcript, hence she almost certainly didn’t have seizures. Similarly for other disorders: e.g. schizophrenia usually produces impaired memory, confused speech, etc. The latter would’ve made it difficult to convince commanders to take her advice and would’ve been used against her as evidence of insanity; the former is contradicted by eyewitness accounts which say she had an uncannily precise memory.
She never claimed that “a supernatural force favored France over England”. She said God supported Charles VII and the Duke of Orleans (not France), and that her “mission” included only lifting the siege of Orleans and crowning Charles VII at Rheims. When she kept going after that point, she said the saints in her visions told her she would be captured “before St. John’s Day”.
Fair enough. There is no question but that Joan claimed to be a recipient of visions. Perhaps she was lying, or perhaps she received her visions from a supernatural force who favored France over England — until it didn’t. Illness is the explanation which makes the most sense to me, but I know that it is great intellectual fun to try to guess the true medical condition of people who died hundreds of years ago without leaving a body for examination. Had these distinguished physicians actually been able to examine Joan, instead of looking at the slender historical record, I’d give their findings more credence. As for generalship; before Joan’s arrival France suffered a series of reverses at the hands of the English and afterward the French were victorious; whether or not she wore the general’s garb, it’s hard to believe that her “advice” wasn’t decisive.
This article seems to imply that Joan of Arc “hallucinated” due to mental illness, which has been debunked by both historians and doctors: e.g. Dr. Philip Mackowiak pointed out that she didn’t have the identifiable outward symptoms of schizophrenia, temporal lobe epilepsy, or ergot poisoning; Drs. J.M. Nores and·Y. Yakovleff rejected the idea that she had temporal lobe tuberculosis; Dr. John Hughes rejected the idea she had any form of epilepsy; historian Regine Pernoud rejected the claim she was afflicted with bovine tuberculosis; and so on.
The article also says she “outgeneraled the best military men of France and England”, which ignores the context: there was always a nobleman in command of the army, although the commanders said they often asked her advice or changed their mind based on her statements. That’s not quite the same as being a “general” herself.