Completed in 1924, Saint Joan is set during the time of the Hundred Years’ War, but it can easily be read as George Bernard Shaw’s response to the First World War. Carnage rules on the battlefields of France as two competing nations, nominally sharing the same belief system, wage war for economic and territorial supremacy, with religion serving as a convenient smoke screen. Shaw’s shell-shocked audiences were no doubt aware that parallels were being drawn—and although today’s conflicts have moved away from Calais and Caen, contemporary viewers will find it easy enough to find their own points of reference in this now doubly historic text.

“The play looks at the forces that stand in the way of the further civilizing of our culture,” says director Kim Collier, who will helm an all-star production of Shaw’s classic at the Arts Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage.

“It puts us right into the contemporary context,” the former Vancouverite and Electric Company cofounder continues, in a telephone interview from her Toronto home. “You’re watching a play where motives around territory and religion and ethnicity are driving conflict, and we’re seeing the same thing today.”

One thing that helps make Saint Joan remarkably fresh, even 90 years after its London debut, is that Shaw’s script offers no easy answers. Perhaps in reaction to the wartime jingoism of his British peers, the lifelong pacifist paints patriotism and faith as ambivalent forces, capable of inspiring the noblest thoughts or masking the most venal impulses.

“It’s a little cynical about ideology and belief,” Collier says. “It’s sort of about the flaws that we have when we are unable to see where our blind spots are.”

Shaw is sympathetic to his heroine: as the director points out, Joan of Arc might be driven by a near-psychotic belief in her duty to God, but she’s also very firmly on the side of the common good. “The thing about Joan is that she doesn’t compromise, and it’s very rare to find that,” she says. “It’s either freedom or death, as it were. Today, we have many people who come along with strong ideas but they sort of get co-opted or suppressed. What Joan has, though, is a deep moral clarity, a commonsense humanity that she will not betray.…And if you have that, you can effect incredibly powerful change in the world.”

The intensity of the role has made it a plum part for midcareer actors—and when it came time to cast her Joan, Collier knew just where to turn. Meg Roe will handle the role, topping a cast that includes the estimable Scott Bellis, Bob Frazer, Dean Paul Gibson, and Tom McBeath.

“Meg’s spirit and her deep integrity as a person are really, really powerful,” Collier enthuses. “And not only that, she is just such a bright, charismatic woman. Part of what makes Joan so spectacular is her incredible personality and depth of clarity, and Meg has both those things to bring to the role, on top of her incredible talent with text and ideas. She’s just such a great person to play the role of Joan.”

Roe, in turn, notes that she’s been anticipating this gig for the entirety of her career.

“I grew up with my dad telling me that it was a role actresses were supposed to play,” she explains during a break in rehearsals. “So for a long time I thought it was something I was supposed to do, probably before I’d even read it, and certainly before I really understood what it was. I read it as a preteen, and came to it again in university, and then saw a couple of productions in my adulthood—and it’s grown on me.

“I was saying to Scott Bellis the other day—and this is not my idea; it’s something I read—that it’s one of the few parts in classical theatre where it’s a female character who is not driven by or in opposition to a male character,” Roe continues. “Joan just exists on her own.…To work on a classic piece of text which is complicated and beautifully written and hard, and to be able to inhabit it as a fully formed, three-dimensional woman, is so exciting. That’s really fun.”

Roe believes that Shaw’s prescience is a big part of what makes Saint Joan so enduring. “You know that he was speaking specifically to his time, and yet he had this eyeball on what was coming that is really fascinating and startling,” she says. “When I’m listening to the arguments in the play, I’m really challenged by who I agree with and who I don’t, and why.…I like that it’s grey, that it explores the grey. It’s not black-and-white. It’s about a world that’s insisting on black-and-white, but Shaw really delves into the complexity and ambiguity of being human. That’s something that I’m personally excited by: I like the feeling of discomfort when you come up against big ideas and you’re just not sure where you fit in them.”

Collier feels much the same. “It’s a very topical play, and I think people will react to it in any number of ways,” the director notes. “But, regardless, you will go out of the theatre thinking.”

Saint Joan runs at the Arts Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage until November 23.