Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...LIFE FOR THE world's future," the devil's disciple cried from the gallows. It is a gesture of self-conscious heroism that would have done Nathan Hale proud, but in George Bernard Shaw's world of comic melodrama, it remains only a gesture. In The Devil's Disciple, Richard Dudgeon cannot die, for his life, as a newly-created American saint, and the world's future, symbolized by the birth of the United States, depend on each other...
...action with dramatic flair, twirling his cape flamboyantly, strutting around the stage and insulting everyone in sight. Edelman's spitfire pacing and clever use of props, together with Glover's easy stage presence, make this scene--in which the relatives gather to hear Dudgeon pere's will--a comic gem that sets the tone for the rest of the production...
Playing opposite Dudgeon, Robert Murch makes a virtuous and likeable Anderson. As Dudgeon less convincingly ascends to martyrdom, Murch, everworldy, acts his own transformation from tranquil pastor to booted man of war in a high comic vein...
While Glover and Anderson steal some scenes, James Valentine as "Gentlemanly Johnny" Burgoyne steals the show. The part of Burgoyne--a supercilious aristocrat straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan--is an ideal comic showcase, and Valentine makes the most of it, eliciting a laugh a line. Mugging outrageously and delivering his lines with superb timing, Valentine etches a sharp portrait of a British general with the humanity to rejoice in a defeat that prevents murder...
Part of her problem stems from the difficulty of the role: if the minister's wife is too appealing, Dudgeon's eventual rejection of her will seem neither understandable nor sympathetic, distorting the comic balance of the play. For that reason, director Edelman has made Fulton's performance the most stylized in the production. Although Fulton has some good moments--when her face is transfigured by the memory of Dudgeon's heroism, for example--for the most part, she ends up playing Judith as a stock comic character, a foolish, romantic female who inhabits an entirely different theatrical world than...