Martini Talk: The Devil's Disciple

A song for today: "The More You Ruv Someone" from Avenue Q because it's sung by Christmas Eve.

A song for tomorrow:  "Minnie The Moocher."  Cab Calloway would have been 100 years old on Christmas Day.

A song for the next day:  Anything from Golden Boy.  'Cause it's Boxing Day, ya know.

Perhaps George Bernard Shaw is not the first name that comes to mind when thinking of someone to write a play set during the American Revolution, but when you consider it gave the great deconstructer or of all things human a chance to mock American Puritanism and be critical of British governmental incompetence it seems a natural match.

Written more than a century before Douglas Carter Beane did pretty much the same thing with Xanadu, The Devil's Disciple was Shaw's 1897 reaction to everything he thought was wrong with the theatre that was popular at the time.  Loading the piece with melodrama and clichéd characters, the playwright was highly amused when his contemporaries praised its originality.  Some may draw parallels between the Shavian commentary on British imperialism and the actions of a certain superpower today (especially when that name "George" keeps popping up) but no matter your political leanings the play is still damn funny and director Tony Walton's smart and well-acted production at the Irish Repertory Theatre is a pleasure from start to finish.

The Dickensianly named Dick Dudgeon (played with flashy charm by Lorenzo Pisoni) is considered a rascally devil by his dictatorially moral New Hampshire mother (Darcy Pulliam) whose idea of a morning greeting is, "Get up and be ashamed of yourself."  But if Dick drinks a little and hangs out with the wrong crowd it's only in a patriotic pursuit of happiness.  When innocently left alone with the minister's wife, Judith (Jenny Fellner), who despises his flippant attitude toward traditional decency, he's arrested by redcoats who believe he's the town's parson.  Rather than explain their error, Dick willingly assumes the identity to protect a fellow human.

With the Brits in a hurry to execute someone by noon in order to make a public show of their presence, Dick knows he's dead at 12:01 and has nothing to lose by speaking his mind during the quickie trial.  And he does so with such civility and poise that General "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne (John Windsor-Cunningham, wonderfully droll) is delighted to be in the presence of a fellow gentleman who displays bravery, intelligence and manners, politely advising the doomed fellow to choose to be hanged instead of shot by a firing squad, knowing the poor marksmanship of his soldiers.  The chumminess between the two gives Shaw an opportunity to provide the play's best samplings of high comedy and Robert Sedgwick, as the buffoonish Major Swindon who must hold back his infuriation as he tries to conduct the trial, serves as a fine foil.

Aside from directing, Walton also designed the modest but functional set which provides four settings on a small space.  His colonial costumes and British uniforms are beautifully detailed, complemented well by Robert-Charles Vallance's wigs.

Noting the colonist's willingness to sacrifice his life for a cause, Shaw has Burgoyne explain, "Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like. It is the only way a man can become famous without ability."  Little did either man know that by the early years of the 21^st Century the people of this industrious nation would have come up with so many more ways to become famous without ability.

Michael Dale's Martini Talk appears every Monday and Thursday on BroadwayWorld.com.

Photo by Carol Rosegg: Cristin Milioti, Lorenzo Pisoni, and Robert Sedgwick