‘Poor Clare’ @ Stage West
Artwork by Jen Schultes; photos by Evan Michael Woods
—Jan Farrington
For those of us raised up in Catholic schools, reading snippets from mom’s Lives of the Saints (when the library books ran out), the name Clare—aka Saint Clare, rich-girl runaway follower of Saint Francis, yes, that Clare—is very familiar.
In the Italian countryside of the 13th century, he (Francis)—and then she, and then thousands of others—left everything to follow a “holy poverty” that even now seems radical, un-do-able. And in Chiara Atik’s vibrant play Poor Clare, Stage West’s sharply funny and challenging pick for this holiday (holy day?) season of many faiths and peoples, we are asked to do what Clare did: open our eyes, and think. Stage West calls it “a divine riches to rags story”—and I think I like that.
Atik writes the dialogue in a casual modern vernacular that’s amusing without being cute. Here’s an early exchange between the uncertain Clare (Kayland Jordan) and the slightly-nerdy but intense Francis (Danny Lovelle). She’s started to collect clothes, but isn’t sure how to approach The Poor:
CLARE: Well I don’t know the best channels --
FRANCIS: The best channels would just be you giving these clothes to the people who need them….You know the encampment under the Ponte Vecchio?
CLARE: Yeah.
FRANCIS: It’s like twenty families right there. You could start there.
CLARE: (in a small voice) Yeah, I guess. (beat) But. What do I do, just. Go up to someone and be like. “Excuse me, are you poor?” I mean, I can’t do that! That’s so --
FRANCIS: What?
CLARE It’s like, presumptuous!
FRANCIS: They live under a bridge! They know you know they’re poor!
If you’re having a Clueless flashback moment, you aren’t wrong. Both well-off teens, Clare and Cher stumble in their first efforts to “do something.” But Clare persists, and grows scene by scene: questioning her family wealth, pitching in to help Francis—and going from a girl who screams at the sight of a Beggar asking for spare change (Francisco Grifaldo) to having an actual conversation with the guy—to find out what he and the families under the bridge need.
Clare and younger sister Beatrice (Bethany Mejorado) are constantly having their hair put up (have you seen medieval hair-dos?) by servants Peppa (Laurel Collins) and Alma (Tallulah Rogers), who keep them up on the town gossip (like a guy named Francis renouncing his father’s riches in a very public way).
The girls mother Ortolana (Lisa Lloyd), a well-traveled lady (she’s been to the Holy Land!), is focused on finding Clare a good match—a wealthy, somewhat older man who spends much of his time "invading” other places with a small army. “Is [mom] just setting me up with who SHE would like to be with?” Clare wonders. At any rate, he’s rich—though Clare is more and more uneasy as the pricey wedding gifts pour in. You can almost hear her asking herself, possibly for the first time: “Do I need this?”
What will Clare do?
Director Emily Scott Banks does a fine job of helping the cast keep a lively balance between the play’s excellent sense of comedy—and its deep dive into ideas about inequality and social justice. Poor Clare’s special quality, and half the fun, is in helping us see these characters as real people, not “history”: people living their one and only life on earth, making everyday choices that will send them off in one direction or another.
Little moments keep the story fresh: Clare improvises a rope “belt” for Francis’ too-long robe (the Franciscan friars wear them still), teases him about being the Pope’s “pen pal” (it’s true), and helps him plan a crèche or Nativity scene inside the church, complete with manger, hay, live animals, etc. Francis began that tradition, and in Poor Clare tells us why:
FRANCIS: It’s one thing to think about the baby in the manager and the angels and no room at the inn. It’s going to be another to SEE a baby, an actual baby, in a stack of straw, his frightened parents, no fire, no blankets. I mean I want people to really get what it was like, that this family was poor and desperate. I don’t think anyone understands that anymore.
Brian Clinnin’s set design (and Roma Flowers’ lovely lighting of it) will make you ache for an evening in Italy—sandalwood tones and wide pillared arches, silhouettes of tile-roofed buildings and neighborhood churches. The costumes by Aaron Patrick DeClerk drape and flutter on the 13th-century ladies, their rich fabrics and trim a contrast to the rough clothes of servants, Francis, and The Poor. As the Beggar (Grifaldo) comes forward to tell us about his soldier’s life, we see the begging cup and the cold hands, barely covered by the shredded strings of his clothes.
There isn’t a sprig of holly in sight, or an elf on a shelf, but Poor Clare feels just right as a Christmas/holiday/human story for the season. I get the feeling Dickens would have approved of Atik’s way of making us laugh—and take things to heart.
CLARE: Not everyone can just give up their whole life!
I have to believe that there’s a way to have a semblance of a normal existence and still, like, help people, there’s a middle ground.
FRANCIS: No, there isn’t.
CLARE: Come on!
God bless us, every one.
WHEN: November 30-December 17, 2023
WHERE: 821/823 West Vickery, Fort Worth
WEB: stagewest.org
