12 May 1977
t's
1616 and Pug, a rather junior Devil, is spoiling for trouble, "Prove
me! Prove me!" he pesters his blase Devil-in-Chief, throwing himself
around the stage like an excited child. Well, Devil-in-Chief finally relents
and consigns Pug to Earth, thre to wreak what devilish havoc he may, but,
like other childish enthusiasms, this one is destined to end in tears of
disappointment: Earth, Pug discovers, is already the plague-spot of the
cosmos, and, whatever devilry he attempts to hatch, the one certain thing
is that some rascally human being will have thought of it first and beaten
him to it. Before Devil-in-Chief calls it a day and rules Earth out-of-bounds
to his demons, the action is fast, furious and hilarious, and mostly consists
of human beings running circles around poor Pug.
Adapted by Peter
Barnes, directed by Stuart Burge and performed
by Birmingham
Repertory Theatre at the Lyttleton, Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass is a brilliant
play, exquisitely produced--an evening of rare and joyous entertainment.
The production is crammed with real humorous (mostly villainous) characters
and incidents which come thick and fast throughout.
Chris Ryan's acrobatically lustful, strange-gaited,
transparently villainous Pug makes a perfect picture of innocent bewilderment
as things go against him. Peter Vaughan makes a miserly gull of his Earthly
master, Fitzdotterel, and the beautiful Anna Calder-Marshall's astonished
virtue as a plain-thinking Mistress Fizdotterel is most amusingly conveyed.
There's a compelling professional pride about Derek Godfrey's eloquent opportunist,
Meercraft, and Alan Rickman is handsome, graceful and inventively
funny as Wittipol and a couple of ladies! Also contributing no small amount
are Bernard Lloyd, David Burke, William Lindsay, David Suchet, Roger Kemp,
Elizabeth Power, and music by John Leach.
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