Howard Miller takes a look at The Devil's Disciple at Theatre Row:
George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple is a melodrama. Or, wait, it's a comedy. No, it's an antiwar satire with political overtones. Anyway, you get my drift. It is difficult to pin down, this 1897 play that takes place during the American Revolution but which was considered at the time to be a thinly veiled call for a free Ireland. That link with the British-Irish situation would be difficult to discern in this day and age, at least by American audiences. But even leaving out the Irish connection, New York's primo Shaw devotee David Staller, whose Gingold Theatrical Group has for years offered readings and fully staged performances of Shaw's plays, has brought a whiplash-inducing all-of-the-above approach to the production that opened tonight at Theatre Row. |
