3 May 1977
| Anna Calder-Marshall and Alan Rickman |
s it well deserved, the
Birmingham Rep's production of Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass
has come to London, the city that Jonson shows in the play as being too
wicked for the devil. It is a play hardly ever seen, but in Peter Barnes's adaptation it should be
safe to wish it a long and active life. More than simply showing it as stageworthy,
Mr Barnes has brought out the play's richness from an exceedingly convoluted
text; it is now so spirited and vital, so apt in its depiction of wickedness
that not only London, but cities less noted for their sinning, should welcome
it with recognition.
It is not the devil who stirs up the mischief
here, but a minor devil, Pug, who falls into the earth's mischief when he
is given a chance by Satan to visit London. Granted the body of a hanged
cutpurse, Pug attaches himself as a servant to the vainglorious booby, Fitzdotterel.
Fitzdotterel has already been fixed upon by Wittipol, a young gallant who
seeks Fitzdotterel's wife, and Meercraft, a promoter who has elaborate plans
to fleece the old man and make him "Duke of the Drowned-lands."
The phrase "poor
devil" may never have had richer meaning, for the stratagems Pug encounters
have him reduced to a gibbering wreck before his allotted 24 hours are up.
Frequently beaten, lecherously set upon and thrown in prison for his only
crime--the theft of clothes from a copulating couple--Pug never gets the
hang of earthly villainy, though his once-hanged body nearly meets that
fate a second time.
Pug is played by Chris
Ryan with boundless energy. He never reaches for the women he lusts after,
but throws himself across tables and the length of a room to get them. He
stutters in his anxiety to lay plots, but is knocked over by the rush of
human conspirators. It is a masterful creation, zany and inventive, but
only a facet of the wealth of fine performances on the stage.
Stuart Burge has directed
his company with a fineness of touch that leads the action to within moments
of mayhem before he draws the actors back to the safety of simple comedy.
Anna Calder-Marshall as Mrs Fitzdotterel is the most delicate creation,
fainting with the thought of infidelity and marvellously embarrassed when
her suitor, disguised as the "Spanish Lady," throws suggestive
glances her way. Her suitor, played by Alan Rickman, is delicately
lecherous, buying his way to an audience with her, risking duel and debt
for her favours, and he speaks with a fine resonance, in passion and in
drag.
There are yet more performances,
as rich as they were when I last saw the production, at the Edinburgh Festival,
but I should note Peter Vaughan's Fitzdotterel which is, if anything, even
more a masterpiece of foolishness than before, because everything, from
faked madness to his anxiety to wear his new cloak to the play, The Devil
is an Ass, is played with fixed dignity.
Since work of this calibre
lies in the regional theatres it is lucky we have a National Theatre that
can bring it to London. That such a joyous work, so fully realized, should
be the first production to do is doubly fortunate. Jonson's plays, at once
so virtuous and bawdy, are happily back in the theatre's repertoire.
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