Word: devilled
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
...than with her mother, and lectured her sternly about his superior philosophical systems ("Mine," he wrote, "are based on reason, and yours are merely the fruit of stupidity"). He was more jovial with his valet Carteron: "Ah: you ancient pumpkin cooked in bugs' juice, third horn of the devil's head, codface drawn out like the two ears of an oyster, slipper of a procuress." It was hardly an appropriate tone to take with one's valet, but Carteron was no ordinary valet; he was a member of the orgy...
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...