Theatre in Review: All the Devils Are Here (DR2 Theatre)

	Patrick Page. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

If you happen to be in Union Square and catch a whiff of brimstone, don't be surprised. It's merely Patrick Page, holding a séance of sorts, calling up the spirits of Shakespeare's wickedest characters. Beginning with Lady Macbeth's famously diabolical speech ("Come, you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!"), Page offers a guided tour of the damned souls who wreak havoc in the great playwright's tragedies and histories. What's most disturbing about this sleek and elegant entertainment is how plainly, in Page's views, these miscreants resemble us.

All the Devils Are Here is subtitled "How Shakespeare Invented the Villain;" Page contends that before Shakespeare, Western theatre consisted of morality plays in which certain characters personified specific vices, such as covetousness. They were concepts, not people. (He might have noted a couple of Greek ladies named Clytemnestra and Medea, but never mind; they may constitute a separate category, being wronged women who pay back their tormentors in kind.) But, he insists, it is with characters crowding at the stage at the DR2 that evil begins to wear a human face.

Not that the playwright's early efforts were covered in glory: In a nifty bit of textual analysis, Page demonstrates the line-by-line congruency between speeches made by Aaron, the Moor, in Titus Andronicus, and the title character in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. (As T.S. Eliot noted, always borrow from the best.) Soon, however, Shakespeare would create Richard III, the first of his great monsters, whose self-loathing and physical deformities warp his soul, turning him into a ruthless, cold-blooded schemer. Mark Rylance, the best of the recent Richards, played the character as a grinning psychotic, toying with his inferiors for the fun of it. Page gives him a terrifying restraint that, mixed with a snobbish disdain, reveals a calculating mind constantly seeking the shortest way to power. It is the first, but not the last, riveting turn of the evening.

Another highlight is Shylock, the most difficult of the villains, given the antisemitism that pervades The Merchant of Venice. ("Now, remember," Page warns us. "The Elizabethan audience was rabidly antisemitic. They really believed Marlowe's monstrous libel about Jews poisoning wells and drinking the blood of Christian babies.") Page's Shylock is an initially reasonable businessman who, having been abused once too often, simmers with unspoken rage. Twelfth Night's Malvolio, so often reduced to caricature, is here given the high-comedy treatment; commanded (or so he thinks) by his mistress to smile, he strains every nerve, giving way to an unexpectedly sunny expression. It's a moment of sunshine for the audience as well.

Next come two villains with guilty consciences. Page notes that Shakespeare daringly sends Claudius, Hamlet's uncle and stepfather, to the chapel to bare his tortured soul. ("O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven/It hath the primal eldest curse upon't/A brother's murder.") The actor underplays the scene expertly, letting the anguish slip out, like blood from a small flesh wound. Even more spiritually contorted is Angelo, the religious conservative and sexual harasser who drives the plot of Measure for Measure. We get the speech in which Angelo, wielding his governmental position, informs Isabella, the young nun whose body he craves, that she can cry to heaven, but no one will believe her. ("Say what you can, my false outweighs your true.") As long as his sins remain secret, he is at peace with the world. It's a strikingly modern reading of the role.

Page saves his two most disturbing characterizations for last. To play Iago, he did a deep study of psychopathy; according to him, one mental health expert estimates that one person in 25 exhibits all the symptoms. (That's four in the DR2 audience, he adds, pointedly.) The prep work paid off: In his highly original take, Iago has all the appearances of an open-faced, faithful friend, who, in all innocence, poisons Othello's mind against Desdemona. Playing both men, Page enacts a chilling duet, depicting what amounts to a kind of psychological murder. Even more gripping is his Macbeth, a good man maddened by ambition who, as played here, knows exactly where the moral line is situated and that once crossed, no return is possible. Speaking in his trademark basso profundo -- which, depending on the occasion, can be as soothing as hot cocoa or as unsettling as an earthquake under one's feet -- he reduces his delivery to a murmur, the audience gripped by the silence of the grave.

Director Simon Godwin, who knows a thing or two about Shakespeare himself, would appear to be Page's ideal collaborator. His design team has transformed the DR2 stage into a kind of Satanic living room, with scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado swathing the space in red drapery and Stacey Derosier's exposed lighting rig effortlessly carving out the star. Darron L West's sound effects, aside from a regrettably noisy preset playlist of blues music, include lutes, birdsong, bells, marching feet, and the clever use of vocal distortion during the scene between Macbeth and the witches. Emily Rebholz has dressed Page sensibly, with various accessories available for specific characters.

When not peering into the moral darkness, Page is delightful company, whether recalling his youthful fascinating with the gothic soap Dark Shadows, cracking wise about the misadventure of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, or, indulging in a bit of schadenfreude , quoting, from the first public commentary on Shakespeare's writing, adding, "And I take some comfort in the fact that it's a bad review." He also signs off with Prospero's farewell, arguably the most beautiful speech in the entire Shakespearean canon. ("Our revels now are ended. These our actors/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air.") It's an exhilarating display of technique and insight, delivered by an actor who knows what to do with ravishing words. All the devils are here, along with a touch of genius. --David Barbour