REVIEW: Devil's Disciple @ Shaw Festival

[David Akin]

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE
 
The Devil's Disciple. By George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Glynis Leyshon.
The Shaw Festival.
WIth Gordon Rand (Dick Dudgeon)
Peter Hutt (Anthony Anderson)
Sarah Orenstein (Judith Anderson)
Andrew Gillies.(Burgoyne)
 
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. - Every spring, you can be sure that two things
will happen in
Niagara-on-the-Lake.
The trees that line the main boulevard of this quaint village will burst
into pink and white
blossoms and the theatre company that makes its home here will kick off its
season with an
entertaining production of a George Bernard Shaw classic.
The trees have, indeed, blossomed and, with the same annual precision, The
Shaw Festival has
opened with a crowd-pleasing production. This year, the festival leads off
with Shaw's fourth play,
The Devil's Disciple, which had its gala opening Wednesday night in front of
a full house.
But while the village shrubbery is bound to be as perfect as it is every
year, this production of The
Devil's Disciple, while pleasant, is less than the sum of its parts.
While Shaw wrote about many things and about many different kinds of people,
there are two
characters that show up frequently in his plays. He is fond of using a Man
of Action - the type of
character that drives a plot forward, challenging conventional behaviors and
affecting some sort of
everlasting change in the other characters in the play. This Man of Action
(who, notably as in
Saint Joan, can sometimes be a woman) is frequently contrasted with a sort
of Hollow Man - a
character who seems heroic or passionate or admirable in some other way but
is actually empty
of the real stuff the Man of Action is made of.
Shaw first played with these two characters in his third play Arms and The
Man. The Swiss
Captain Bluntschli is the Man of Action and he quickly proves to be the
better of Saranoff, the
Hollow Man.
Shaw re-introduces these two characters in The Devil's Disciple. The play is
set during the
American Revolution and this time the Man of Action is a fellow named Dick
Dudgeon, a
swashbuckling American who's done a bit of gambling and smuggling and
generally run around
thumbing his nose at his Puritan family. While he's not as vacuous as
Saranoff, the Hollow Man
here is the Reverend Anthony Anderson, a smart, patient pastor who is
comfortably ensconced
with a lovely wife and decent lodgings.
As the play opens, Dick's father has died and left the family estate to him,
much to the horror of
Dick's stern pious mother and other disapproving relatives. While the
Reverend Anderson's wife
Judith is among those who would condemn Dick, the Reverend himself is more
neutral and,
shortly after Dick comes into his inheritance, Anderson invites him over to
warn Dick that he is in
danger of being captured and hanged by the British army. Dick, though, says
he is in no danger
and that, in fact, the British want to arrest Anderson.
At that point, Anderson is called away to minister to one of his flock. Just
after he leaves, the
British do indeed come to arrest Anderson. Rather than tell the British they
have found the wrong
man, Dudgeon admits to being Anderson and is led away to be hanged. Upon
discovering
Dudgeon's sacrifice, Anderson is charged into action. He will no longer be
the pious, comfortable
spiritual man but will become a Man of Action.
For Shaw, who was working out themes that would eventually distill
themselves in his masterwork
Man and Superman, The Devil's Disciple was an opportunity to raise a
pedestrian dramatic form -
the melodrama - into the realm of serious art.
That may well have been his intention but in its current incarnation at The
Shaw Festival, The
Devil's Disciple cannot hide its melodramatic pedigree if only because its
two principle performers
- Gordon Rand as Dick and Peter Hutt as Anderson - seem aloof and
disconnected from their
appointed characters.
Like its close cousin farce, melodrama demands that its performers have an
absolutely
unshakeable commitment to a single purpose while on stage. What do they want
and would they
risk it all?
Well, yes, indeed, Dick Dudgeon does risk it all but the question is what is
he risking it for? In
this production, Rand seems to be a symbol of nothing more than an
angst-ridden teenager. He
is little more than a rebel without a cause, raising a middle finger to
anyone who will gainsay him.
Hutt, on the other hand, seems bored beyond belief to find himself playing a
colonial pastor. So,
when he must galvanize himself to become a firebrand who will win the day
for the Americas, it is
little more than hollow posturing.
The other players in this melodrama, though, acquit themselves with humor
and conviction.
Sarah Orenstein's Judith is full-blooded and compassionate; William
Webster's Major Swindon is
full of bluster, silliness and appropriate self-pity; and Andrew Gillies
turn at General Burgoyne is
suave, urbane, and humane.
But unless director Glynis Leyshon can re-direct the dramatic focus of her
two leading men, her
turn to open a festival season will remain a pleasant, pleasing but
unremarkable event.
David Akin                      jdakin at foxnet.net
Staff Reporter                  VOX (807)343-6200
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Thunder Bay, Ontario            CANADA