TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121889/12188900.062

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.9 KB | 77 lines

                                                                                THEATER, Page 78

Having a Hell of a Time


When Satan takes the stage, audiences wind up with angelic
smiles

By William A. Henry III


    His company may not be much esteemed in heaven, but, from
Eve onward, mere mortals have found Satan a singularly seductive
fellow -- spookily charming, mordantly funny, even sexy in a
sulphur-scented way. Writers have been especially beguiled,
from Marlowe and Milton to Shaw and Stephen Vincent Benet.
Indeed, while putting God on display as a character is normally
a guarantee of literary disaster, it sometimes seems that
stories about his arch-opposite just can't miss. Presumably
there is a sound theological basis for all this: virtue could
hardly be considered virtuous if it were also indisputably fun,
while a patently offensive Old Nick would have trouble procuring
the ruin of souls.

    Some playwrights, like Shel Silverstein in The Devil and
Billy Markham, presume that Mr. Scratch has nothing to teach
mankind: the sensible response is to spot the fiend's tricks and
escape perdition. Other dramatists, like David Mamet in Bobby
Gould in Hell, recall that Beelzebub is a fallen angel and
reckon he must be something of a moral philosopher. Both authors
seem to think nothing could be more instructive than a sojourn
in Hades to enhance the remainder of a life back on earth. They
give that opportunity not only to the title characters of their
two one-act plays but also, vicariously, to audiences in a
double bill that opened last week at New York City's Lincoln
Center.

    Billy Markham is a talking blues about a failed songwriter
who decides the devil could not possibly be any worse than the
music publishers and producers who have thwarted his career. A
gambler, boozer, womanizer and general hellion, Markham tosses
away eternity in exchange for a single, futile roll of the dice,
then squanders what reprieves are offered in unrepentant
revelry. He nonetheless stumps Satan twice, escaping the first
time and settling down the second time into a perverse sort of
domestic bliss. Markham's good-ole-boy world view is
distasteful: women are treated as property, and both defeats of
the devil depend on the notion that homosexuality is a fate
worse than damnation. But Silverstein's script, told in verse
with occasional bursts of music, is rowdy and rousing and
raunchily uproarious, especially in a song about a gala party
where saints and sinners mingle ("Richard III is comparing his
hump with Quasimodo's"). The sole performer, as both Markham and
his demonic adversary, is Dennis Locorriere, erstwhile
singer-songwriter of the pop group Dr. Hook. His energy is
boundless, his timing flawless, his depravity seemingly
bottomless in this bewitching romp.

    Mamet's wit at first appears equally prankish -- the stage
is ablaze with hellfire and brimstone, aroar with howls and
explosions, and the devil's chief clerk (Steve Goldstein)
doggedly keeps trying to tell a "two Jews in a bar" joke -- but
he has more serious matters in mind. His subject is how to live
morally in this world rather than penitently in the next, and
the dynamic that fascinates him is why people make excuses, time
and again, rather than attempt to be better. The title
character, played by Treat Williams, is the conscience-pricked
but ultimately expedient movie executive depicted in Mamet's
Speed-the-Plow. Gould is called on the netherworld carpet for
seduction and abandonment of a woman who, when summoned to
testify, proves insufferable even to the great adversary. Mamet
may mistrust all women -- his essay "True Stories of Bitches"
featured his mother, sister and wife -- but this shrew is a
giddyingly specific blend of utter unreason and serene
self-righteousness. Still, her sins pointedly do not excuse
Bobby's. Mamet may josh about the devil but plainly believes in
evil -- and finds it entrenched in the heart of man.