Word: demonized
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What is surprising, is the ease with which the story is transplanted to the 1990's. The Faustus character, Peter Prideau, a Peabody Professor of Christian Morals over at the Divinity School, inadvertently discovers a demon while fiddling with new software called "Cybernectromantics." Desperate to see his deceased wife, Laura, once more, Prideau makes a deal with the demon, nicking his finger with the proffered Swiss army knife and bartering his soul for a meeting with his beloved...
...Demons succeeds most impressively, and fails most abysmally, for one reason: the acting. Will LeBow, as the demon Murray (a former comic who sold his soul for the chance to headline in a Catskills hotel), is hysterical. Strutting across the stage with an obnoxious yellow suit and a mouth you wouldn't want to take home to Mother, Murray, "a demon with heart palpitations," is cheesiness at its best. LeBow manages to perfectly capture the air and nature of the typical Kutscher's comic. Brustein's script walks an extremely fine line between the deliciously kitchy and the horribly cliched...
...updated introduction to the 1994 edition, Grinspoon makes it clear that his intent is neither to encourage nor to stigmatize those who partake of the demon flower. This is just the facts, ma'am, a fogie's guide to Xanadu. Grinspoon has collected and synthesized a great deal of information, and he gives ample to time to the anti-weed agenda. The author quotes a few scary tidbits from the FBI: "He [the user] becomes a fiend with savage or 'cave man' tendencies. His sex desires are aroused and some of the most horrible crimes result..." Horrible crimes...
...comeback drama: it signals his triumphant return to New ! York theater and to the acclaim that was his 30 years ago. But in this poignant, formally exciting memory play he also comes back to the issue of family, which energized Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee faces his demon -- his adoptive mother -- in a dazzling act of exorcism and forgiveness...
Theater: Racing Demon, by David Hare, is a play with ideas...