It’s scandalous that the work of Juana Inés de la Cruz is not more widely known.
Born into a mixed-race family in a remote district of Mexico in 1651, De la Cruz entered a convent at the age of 21, where, ferociously self-educated, she became a poet, playwright and intellectual, renowned across the Spanish-speaking world for her brilliance and learning. Helen Edmundson’s play, commissioned and first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012, tells De la Cruz’s powerful, painful story, and of her battles to find the space to write – a cloister of one’s own – in the face of the Inquisition. You don’t need to have boned up on Counter-Reformation history to sense that it will not end well.
It is heartening to see a new work revived so soon – especially one by a female writer, and with more women than men in the cast – and Edmundson’s elegantly constructed play glimmers with quiet wit. De la Cruz’s progress from keen-as-mustard optimist to tormented soul is nicely shaded, even if it feels somewhat inevitable, and humanises arid debates over the movement of God’s grace and the clash between free will and Christian belief.
There are good performances on offer, too: Naomi Frederick’s ardent De la Cruz is driven more by hope than pragmatism, wilfully blind to the clerical snakes in the grass, and Gwyneth Keyworth shines as a starry-eyed novice sighing for romance. Sophia Nomvete, meanwhile, plays an admirably down-to-earth servant, whose perspective on life is a nice contrast to the high-faultin theology on offer elsewhere: “How are you supposed to decide if you want to marry Jesus,” she asks, “if you haven’t got anyone to compare him with?” In a world where too many women end up trapped, it is touching to see her gain a precious liberty – learning to read.
If the evening fails to kindle, one suspects it’s the fault of John Dove’s efficient but workmanlike production, which rarely attains the feverous, incense-soaked intensity called for by the material. The possibilities of the space are only fitfully explored; too often, the cast find themselves standing around like bewimpled statues. Still, De la Cruz’s life deserves attention, and, in a world where female voices are still pushed to the margins of public space, it feels depressingly timely. “If my thoughts are as learned, as exacting as a man’s, why should they not be heard?” she asks. Amen to that.
• At Shakespeare’s Globe, London, until 5 September. Box office: 020-7401 9919.
