Theater Review: "The Devil's Disciple," by George Bernard Shaw

I've seen roughly half a dozen productions at the Irish Repertory Theater in New York City, and on only one occasion have I ever felt even the slightest regret at having done so.

The company—the only one in New York dedicated solely to mounting the work of Irish- and Irish-American dramatists—recently ended another marvelous production, The Devil's Disciple, by George Bernard Shaw.

For those unfamiliar with this play set in the American Revolution, it concerns Dick Dudgeon, regarded as a reprobate within his family and community for his freethinking ways; the local minister, Anthony Anderson; and Anderson’s considerably younger wife and pretty Judith.

While the minister is away from home, British troops mistake Dudgeon for Anderson, seizing him in the hope that executing the most respected member of the community will frighten the Americans. A secret patriot, the self-proclaimed “devil’s disciple” goes along with the charade to save a belief system he can finally cherish.

Mastering the Melodrama

The play is one of the more unusual ones in the vast Shaw corpus: not just the only one set in America, but his attempt to try an old dramatic form whose use he seriously questioned: the melodrama.

"This thing, with its sobbings & speeches & declamations, may possibly be the most monstrous piece of farcical absurdity that ever made an audience shriek with laughter," the playwright wrote actress Ellen Terry as he struggled to wrestle it to form.

Shaw needn’t have worried. The 1897 American production of the play marked a turning point for Shaw, finally putting him in comfortable circumstances. He earned ₤2,000, or ₤100,000 in 1997 money, from a Midwest tour of the play, according to Michael Holroyd’s Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition.

So irrepressible was Shaw’s wit and delight in intellectual provocation that one barely notices the hairbreadth escapes, the love triangle, and other conventions of the melodrama genre.

In a way, the need to stick to form might have curtailed Shaw’s natural tendency toward garrulousness, which, at its worst, sorely tries the patience of modern audiences. The whole thing, at least in the Irish Rep production, clocked in at a little less than 2 hours.(Compare it with John Bull's Other Island, written only seven years later in Shaw's long career, which can last up to 3 ½ hours.)

Director Tony Walton (who is, incidentally, the ex of Julie Andrews) also kept a tight rein on the proceedings, reducing the more than 100 actors from its original 1897 production to only a half dozen here—with, as far as I can see, no detriment to the play.

At the same time, Walton knows how to milk a scene for all it's worth, notably in the Act II sexual tension between the ironically eponymous title character and the prim Judith. While Dudgeon whistles "Yankee Doodle,” she pours two cups of tea, with agonizing slowness.

What enables the play to rise above its melodramatic origins is Shaw’s delight in paradox. Dick, the widely loathed black sheep of the family, commits himself to a Christlike martyrdom to save the patriot cause and another human being. The wellspring of his action is deeper and more generous than the intolerance practiced by his pious mother, whom he has come to despise. "I have been brought up standing by the law of my own nature,” Dick tells a tearful Judith (who has, to his distress, fallen in love with him), “and I may not go against it, gallows or no gallows."

Lorenzo Pisoni, who played Dick Dudgeon, looked, with his dark hair and errant forelock, like a younger Hugh Grant, and was especially good in his entrance scene, tossing his leather coat into the corner of the family home as he whirled on one horrified family member or friend after another. He has an effective foil in Robert Sedgwick as Rev. Anderson, the man who trades Bible for sword, rallying the rebel troops against the British. In Shaw’s dramatic formulation, the moment of decision reveals men’s true characters.

“History, sir, will tell lies, as usual”

The center of the play swings in its latter half to John Windsor-Cunningham, playing with droll verve the witty playwright-turned general “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne. A key scene occurs when Burgoyne receives the news that General Howe will not join forces with him because of a snafu in the London war office, and he is forced to confront the unthinkable for a British army facing a ragtag bunch of colonials: defeat. “What will history say?” his fatuous Maj. Swindon asks him. Burgoyne answers, in a reply echoing down the years: “History, sir, will tell lies, as usual.”

Shaw’s scene was evidently based on historian G.M. Trevelyan’s exoneration of Burgoyne, which in turn took the general’s word for it. In a film script for a proposed 1933 version of the play, Shaw even added a scene in which Lord George German failed to send Howe instructions to link with Burgoyne because Germain's carriage horses are waiting.

Modern accounts are not as accepting of this version of events. In Iron Tears: America’s Battle for Freedom, Britain’s Quagmire: 1775-1783, the fine historian Stanley Weintraub makes plain that Howe received instructions from Lord George Germain, the minister in charge of the war effort, in May 1777, giving him plenty of time to move--then proceeded to blithely ignore the message.

(I also learned from Weintraub that Burgoyne, in addition to serving as an MP and writing plays, also served as commander in chief of British forces in Ireland from 1782 to 1783—exchanging one trying colonial tour of duty for another. Moreover, Americans of a certain age who have grown addicted to televised hearings of congressional committees investigating the conduct of America’s foreign wars might be interested to know that in the Revolutionary War, Britain’s Parliament held sessions that were every bit as partisan and acrimonious—and Burgoyne was a key participant in these.)

As with Arms and the Man, Shaw is most interested in taking down what Burgoyne bemoans in the play as "Jobbery and snobbery, incompetence and red tape." In the preface to John Bull's Other Island, Shaw contrasted the faux-romantic Lord Nelson with the grittily realistic Duke of Wellington, much to the latter's advantage.

Windsor-Cunningham’s genial scene-stealing should come as no surprise to fans of the 1959 film adaptation by Guy Hamilton (who was about to achieve greater fame in a few years for helming one of the best of the entire James Bond series, Goldfinger). The marquee names in this version for American audiences were co-stars and friendly rivals Kirk Douglas (playing Dudgeon) and Burt Lancaster (Anderson). But the one who walks off with the acting honors is Laurence Olivier, at close to mid-career peak, as Burgoyne. (I own, but have not yet seen, a BBC production with Patrick Stewart as Anderson and Ian Richardson as “Gentleman Johnny.”)

My Shavian leanings

"Are you a Shavian?" my Columbia friend Steve inquired not long ago.

I thought about it for only a few seconds, rapidly considering all the objective evidence—my zipping through more than a dozen Shaw plays when I was in the seventh and eighth grades (it would take me years before I really understood them); shelling out hundreds of dollars over the last 20 years for Shaw performances (sometimes different performances of the same play); paying for a deluxe DVD set of BBC performances of his works; even visiting (once) the Shaw Festival in Canada.

"Yes," I replied to Steve.

I understand the objections that some have to Shaw, including friends of mine with more literary talent and discerning critical judgment. [Internal editor: "Can you give me their names? I may want a…" (clearing throat) "…guest columnist whenever you take a break."]

I know that Shaw was a bit of an odd duck in his personal relations, and, for all his gifts, not just wrong but tragically, murderously wrong about the glorious possibilities of eugenics, Marxism in the Soviet style, and even Mussolini's brand of fascism.

But among modern playwrights, in my estimation, Shaw may be surpassed only by Chekhov. He makes us use our brains as well as our lungs, for mighty guffaws. Our physical and mental health are both the better for the effort.