THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE
No, it’s not the latest TV special from Geraldo Rivera. But in its wittily purposeful examination of romantic, political, military, and moral ironies, The Devil’s Disciple, George Bernard Shaw’s 91-year-old comedy about unlikely heroism in the American Revolution, is a far more advanced piece of work than much of what passes for modern today. Written in 1897, and originally produced not in England but in the United States, Shaw’s first commercially successful stage work continues to delight with its pointed analysis of the vagaries of human behavior.
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At 40, Shaw was the author of five novels and seven plays–all of them outright failures or, at best, unprofitable succes d’estime. Trying to find a way to make his theater of ideas salable in the commercial marketplace, he turned to that most tried and true of genres, the Victorian melodrama. All the devices of that venerable formula are here–the roguish young villain-turned-hero who offers his life to save a better man, a sweet but unconsummated romance, an unhappy orphan saved from penury, a case of mistaken identity, a cliff-hanger ending, and a daring rescue from the gallows–but as Shaw undercuts the moral and dramatic conventions of his time, everything is turned on its head. The sanctity of mother-son love? Forget it. The play’s hero, Dick Dudgeon, hates his mother every bit as much as she detests him. He’s even proclaimed himself a follower of Satan in defiance of his mother’s grim, prim puritanism. (Not that Dick engages in black masses or animal sacrifice or anything so bizarre; in an officially Christian society, being a freethinker is sin enough.) But even Dick’s proclaimed diabolism is unmasked by Shaw: behind his droll wit and dashing demeanor, Dick is an indignant child, seething with rage at his unloving mother and desperately, though unconsciously, seeking a positive parent figure. This he finds in the man he assumes to be his antagonist: Anthony Anderson, the middle-aged town minister. The wily and worldly Anderson disarms Dick’s anger with his kindness and truly Christian charity.
The rest of the cast is similarly weak, so the production lacks the fiery melodramatic swagger needed to heighten the play’s satire and deeper moral conflict. Only Richard Burton Brown, in the virtually foolproof role of the British General Burgoyne–a role laced with the most keen-edged epigrams Shaw was capable of–gets the laughs his role offers, though his rather common approach (recalling Alfred Hitchcock by way of W.C. Fields) seems inappropriate to a character nicknamed Gentlemanly Johnny.
And Loudon surely could have no better sparring partner than Bill Cobbs, who has played Hoke since Daisy opened last April. Cobbs matches Loudon’s tough presence as superbly as he did Burstyn’s more introspective delicacy. And the comedy in Hoke’s and Daisy’s combative mutual affection is sharper now (though it’s never mugged, never overbroad), making the play’s final confrontation with old age and death especially poignant. This Daisy is well worth a repeat visit.
