Word: deviled
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David Merrick recently took his annual physical examination at Boston's Lahey Clinic, and his friends may be relieved to learn that he does not have a long red pointy tail. In other respects, however, David is a devil of a fellow...
...gimmick. Fist (Faust) makes a deal with Chum (Me-phisto), who offers Fist the chance to experience "breakthroughs." All he wants in return is a 26-week option, subject to renewal, on Fist's inmost primeval soul. Oddly enough, when he first steps into the world as the Devil's man, Fist doesn't change much. He starts cutting classes carefreely, naturally. But it is some time before he even gets around to going to a motel with a pretty young high school girl, whose name, of course, is Margaret. Still, what with glorying in their wickedness...
...unholy deal, he is as dissatisfied and disorganized as ever. Chum Breed tries to remedy that by feeding him a capsule of LSD. Fist kicks his inhibitions to tatters and even makes a nightmarish descent into Hell. That does it. When he recovers, Fist breaks his contract with the Devil and gladly opts for "the real world, crummy...
Lithgow stages this tale of a soldier bargaining with the devil and learning better, with whimsy verging on burlesque. Lithgow himself plays the devil as a slithery eccentric who goes after souls with a butterfly net. The ubiquitous Arthur Friedman as narrator bounces in and out of the action, as does a chameleon chorus that appears as everything from peasants to sheep to a fluid landscape. Philip Heckscher, the soldier, is appropriately ingenuous but his voice often betrays uncomfortable strain. Jane Mushabac has choreographed the play. Her group dances have wit but become overly frantic when Lithgow's devil gets...
Neil Miller's orchestra, which is fine when it's blaring forth the overtures, sounds embarrasingly thin during quieter numbers like "How Are Things in Glocca Morra" and "Old Devil Moon." Wendy Philbrick's choreography--except for the genuinely funny beginning of Act II--seems humdrum, and fuller of to-ing and fro-ing than the quarters permit. And in a play about better race relations, it's unfortunate that a late line of dialogue, rather than the makeup, informs us that most of the chorus of sharecroppers is supposed to be Negro...