Southwark Playhouse’s new production in its Little Theatre is an updating of Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. The original is set during the American War of Independence inside a Puritan community and has a strongly religious undercurrent. There is a mater familias who demands moral and religious propriety from the members of her household – her younger son, now a soldier in the British army, and her newly arrived niece whose father has recently been hanged as a traitor.
She does, though, have an older son, the family’s long estranged black sheep – and self-declared ‘Devil’s disciple’ – who has returned for the reading of his father’s will which, it turns out, has been changed at the last minute in his favour. To the horror of the widow, Richard gets everything.
Enzo Benvenuti as Elias Conroe and Jill Greenacre as Adele Conroe
Director Mark Giesser has updated his production, now renamed The Devil May Care, to be just a few years after Shaw wrote the play in 1896 and taken it to the other side of the world. The new setting is the Philippines where the Americans replace the British as the imperial power and the politics of race rather than religion take centre stage. Just as colonial America fought the British Empire for its freedom, the Philippines are staging an insurrection against the Americans. However, while the background has changed (as have the characters’ names), the human plot is at its heart the same.
Richard Conroe has arrived for the reading of the will and discovered while on the road that the British soldiers are planning to hang an insurrectionist – and this turns out to be the local minister. When the soldiers arrive, however, they find Conroe with the minister’s wife, Judith, and they mistake Conroe for the minister himself. Conroe plays along, though he knows he is almost certain to be hung and persuades Judith to play along too – or her husband will be hung instead.
Beth Burrows as Judith Prestwick and Callum Woodhouse as Richard Conroe
Shaw was a great polemicist and loved nothing more than an ethical dilemma as a means of exploring the big questions. In this case, it is – simply put – whether the bad man should hang for the crimes of the good man who can then continue his good work. This is, of course, essentially Conroe’s decision. He does begin to repeat Sydney Carton’s “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done” from A Tale of Two Cities – but as a throwaway ironical reference. As he says with disarming honesty to Judith, he can’t really understand why he’s behaving so selflessly either. In fact, he is clearly falling in love with Judith but there is also the political element – the minister, Paul Prestwick, is fighting for the independence of the local people.
As Richard, Callum Woodhouse (you’ll recognise him as Leslie from The Durrells and Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small), delivers a storming performance as the centre around which everything revolves. Mercurial, his motives incomprehensible – often even to himself – his charm and ease convince us to suspend our disbelief right to the unexpected last moment (this is a plot with plenty of twists). Jill Greenacre is excellent as his spiky mother and, as Judith, Beth Burrows brings the promise of feminism-to-come to her character, even while racked with doubt about the best course to follow.
Callum Woodhouse at Richard Conroe
In two supporting roles, Richard Lynson plays both the minister and, most impressively, the General investigating the insurrection, comically bewildered by all the identity swaps. Enzo Benvenuti is a suitably craven younger brother while Izyan Hay as Isabel has a role that is much expanded from Shaw’s original play. As the voice of the oppressed she expresses their plight, inevitably becoming something of a cipher in the process but, there again, Shaw was the polemical firebrand of his day so perhaps this is not a development that would have disappointed him.
The Devil May Care runs until 1st February at Southwark Playhouse, Borough. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk.
