Daily Texan Staff
"Tears! The devil's baptism!" Arriving at the end of the first act of George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, this declaration encapsulates the struggle between moral hypocrisy and principled conviction in this "comic melodrama."
The artist-run Vortex theater specializes in low-budget productions. The effect sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The production of The Devil's Disciple, with its stage directions for a plain set, and the thematic emphasis on Puritanism at its bleakest, is one of the instances when it works.
Set at the beginning of the American Revolution, the play shows the conflict between complacent and hypocritical religion, and misunderstood and much-maligned integrity. The father of the Dudgeon household has died after drastically changing his will. Instead of bequeathing his farm to his hellfire-and-brimstone wife, he leaves it to his eldest son, Richard known as the Devil's Disciple. Over the course of the play, Shaw shows that names don't always function as accurate descriptions of what they are meant to identify. Richard, a mixture of Shakespeare's noble Henry V and the charmingly antisocial Judd Nelson character in The Breakfast Club, is not evil. Through his conviction and willingness to sacrifice himself, the complacently religious townspeople learn not to evaluate labels or themselves without a grain of salt.
Richard functions as the focal point for the play, challenging the hypocrisy of a community that uses religion as an excuse for a mutual admiration society. Their religion finds its highest expression in the romantic and superficial sensibilities of the local minister's wife, Judith Anderson. In the character of Judith, viewers can see that when put to the test, ideology doesn't stand up to outside pressure unless there is a strong conviction behind it. Richard is willing to sacrifice himself for the cause of freedom against a despotic regime. Judith, initially a vocal opponent of Richard and his lifestyle, quickly declares, "What do I care about my duty?" and switches her allegiances from her husband to Richard when the heat is on.
The production emphasizes Richard's sex appeal and plays up the sexual tension between him and Judith. This is a mistake. Attraction accounts for Judith's speedy about-face, but it doesn't account for Richard's behavior. Richard is no ladies man originally (though the women generally would prefer it if he were). There is definite sexual tension between him and Judith in the original, but it is also true that Richard is characterized as a man of principle on a one-man mission to shine a garish spotlight on religious hypocrisy. By emphasizing the romantic aspects of the play, the contrast between Richard's sense of honor and Judith's fickleness is lost in the production (perhaps intentionally: Shaw is often criticized for his portrayals of women and The Devil's Disciple is no exception).
With two exceptions, the performances are overdone, though they improve slightly as the production progresses. In fairness, Shaw himself characterized the play as a melodrama. Jennifer Underwood hits a homerun with her portrayal of the over-the-top Puritan matriarch Mrs. Dudgeon. Robert Rudie truly steals the show as the urbane and enlightened General "Gentlemanly Johnny" Burgoyne. Burgoyne enters the play to participate in the courtroom scene where Richard is tried for rebellion. This scene on its own is worth seeing dramatized for the shimmeringly clever repartee between Burgoyne and Richard and the exploration of the philosophical positions and motivations of the characters. Burgoyne and Richard are both men of conviction and intelligence, they just happen to be on opposite sides of the law. Also opposed in the scene is the judge, Major Swindon, who blindly follows duty, and Judith, who blindly disregards it. Ultimately, these oppositions create problems and support Judith's husband's comment that "you'll be surprised to find how like hate is to love." This is Shaw's overarching point that labels like "the devil's disciple" don't necessarily reveal any intrinsic characteristic.
The Vortex production, with some flaws, dramatizes Shaw's comic melodrama with the humor and wit that make it worth seeing.
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