Unicorn Theatre’s Poor Clare is a TikTok-styled modernization of a saint’s awakening within a cruel world

Photo by Cynthia Levin/Unicorn Theatre

Set in Assisi, Italy in 1211, playwright Chiara Atik’s reimagining of the origins of an Italian saint. Inspired by the teachings of St. Francis, she founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition. But this adaptation—running now at The Unicorn—dares to ask the difficult questions, like how Yassified was this woman’s origins back when she was a professional Rich Bitch?

Clare is just a regular noblewoman living in medieval Italy, trying out hairstyles and waiting to get married—until a man named Francis starts ranting in the courtyard about the injustice of the world and his dream of disassembling the economic hierarchies that oppress the common man. Clare is a medieval Kardashian with a bright future. In fact, she slays. But when her entourage dismisses her new friend Francis as a clown, she finds herself drawn to his message and slowly but surely she starts to recognize her own privilege, power, and the harm of her inherited existence.

In a timely way, Poor Clare hones in on the internal revelation in people who believe they are “good” but still cannot bring themselves to acknowledge—or take direct action towards rebuking—the powers that inflict suffering on those across the world. It is also, hands down, the funniest thing we’ve ever seen on an independent theatre stage since moving to Kansas City. A powerful message about reckoning with the self, framed around the origins of a religious figure, doesn’t exactly scream “laugh riot” and yet here we are.

Photo by Cynthia Levin/Unicorn Theatre

Dri Hernaez’s take of dopey TikTok star flooded with sudden empathy with Clare is simply a tour-de-force—not just in line delivery but in every small glance and facial twitch throughout the show’s runtime. Morgan Walker’s Beatrice is the perfect foil to Clare and Cathy Barnett’s Ortolana is a sublime take on white savior complex and Liberal guilt. R.H. Wilhoit is more deadpan here than we’ve seen him in recent productions, but his slow, quiet weirdo spiral into radicalization is as scene stealing as ever. Manon Halliburton and Teisha M. Bankston round out the cast as a pair of servants who go from eye-rolling at the spoiled Clare to having to reckon with the fallout of a genuine metamorphosis in Clare and her family’s attempts to stomp out the flames.

Directed by Andi Meyer, Poor Clare runs at Unicorn Theatre [3828 Main Street] through Feb. 11, 2024. Tickets are available here.

Photo by Cynthia Levin/Unicorn Theatre