Word: panizza
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...Panizza's devil seems to be the only one who grasps this fact clearly, and it informs his dissatisfaction and frustration with the scheme of being and not being. He sees the heavenly world the way the playwright does--as a fraud. He's an intellectual type, consigned for his shrewdness to menial tasks and thwarted revolutions. He's sort of sympathetic in his weakness; surely he would be happier with his head in the clouds. Instead, he's worse off than we are, with his feet firmly planted under the ground. It might be going...
...noticeable stench in heaven. Nonetheless, he wistfully longs for material comforts or transcendent bliss--some new clothes would be nice, he hasn't changed since the Spanish Inquisition. The onset of Nausea puts an end to such thoughts, though, and Sartre hasn't even come along yet (Panizza wrote in 1873). Back to work...
...always preoccupy us. Bodily pleasure and desire is an integral part of love, and it is perturbing to see it attacked and love sullied. In Christian terms, love means redemptions, and this is the Catch 22 for the holy Council scandalized by debauchery in the 15th-century Papal Court. Panizza latched onto an intriguing bit of historical trivia for his bawdy mystery play on evil; the first outbreak of syphilis recorded in history occured in the spring...
...PLAY IS UNCONVENTIONAL, and an unusual undertaking for the Loeb mainstage. Panizza's ideas have been undeservedly shunned by directors, but the script has technical faults which director Richard Pena failed to recognize. Sometimes the metaphor of syphilis becomes obsessive, which makes the devil's session before God too long, redundant and plain boring. As the devil himself observes, "You can take a lot of crap as long as you can communicate." His soliloquy is laced with pseudo-scientific clap-trap that is arresting only because Kenneth Demsky's tremulous head, clubfooted hitch and fine, brooding elocution fascinate...
...unfortunate that this production draws you in for the sights and stumbles over the ideas. Oskar Panizza's view of the world turned him into a paranoiac who sought safety and death in an Austrian asylum. He didn't notice when World War II broke out, but he knew the essential facts of it, anyway...