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The house goes silent and dark. We hear a fanfare of trumpets, the pounding of feet, the clash of arms, and over it all, the cries of an infant. A spotlight to centre stage illuminates the figure of an aged nun, wimpled, seated asleep on an ermine covered throne.
Chapelle Jaffe’s 80 minute soliloquy conjures out of ‘airy nothing’ the life-force of this imperious woman whose determination to steer her own course in life shaped the course of European political history. She is also a guiding force in our cultural and social history. It was in her court at Poitiers that the legends of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere were written. 800 years ago, Eleanor gave birth to the rules of courtship by which we conduct our love affairs to this day.
The Coeur de Lion Company performance of Catherine Muschamps’ play, directed by Jean Leclerc, weaves a mind-numbing store of historical threads into a brilliant tapestry. Ms. Jaffe’s Eleanor, alone on the stage at the end of her life, hallucinates the audience as the ghosts of her royal husbands, children, and clerical inquisitors. She imagines she is on trial for the heresy of acting all her life as though women were equal to men. She makes ‘us’ hear her story and recognize that she was right, in everything, all along.
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