Review: ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE at Broad Stage

In the lobby of Santa Monica’s  BroadStage, teasing the heart of Patrick Page’s ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain is a placard querying  “Who would you bring home to your mother?” and listing a veritable rogues gallery of possibilities: Iago, Aaron, Angelo, Richard, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth. Point made: Shakespeare has indeed given the world some rotters.

In ALL THE DEVILS, the solo work that Page has written and now performed at several venues since 2021, we are reacquainted with the whole motley pack of them. Well, OK, perhaps not the entire cannon of Shakespeare’s villains, but arguably the top (or bottom) 7 or 8. Over a convivial 85 minutes directed by Simon Godwin, the shape-shifting Broadway vet Page holds us captive as he demonstrates why he is perpetually in demand as a classical actor, as an interpreter of Shakespeare, and certainly as an enactor of villains. From THE LION KING’S Scar to the Green Goblin, to the titular lord of HADESTOWN, Patrick Page has spent significant stretches of the last three decades burrowing into the souls of individuals who have no soul.

And that’s just Broadway. At regional theaters across the nation, from Utah to Oregon, from San Diego to Washington DC., Page has previously played may of the DEVILS’ villains in full productions. He has lived with them, studied them, and oh boy does he know them. This time around, the actor is organizing them in the context of Shakespeare’s life and career while ruminating about the nature of evil. If “demi-devil” Iago (undoer of OTHELLO) meets the definition of Martha Stout’s SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR, guess what! so do 1 in 25 people.

The evening begins with Page, kneeling over a large book, a staff in his hand which he taps on the ground as he conjures up Lady Macbeth’s first longings of murder:

“Come you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts…fill me from the crown to the toe top full/ Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature/Shake my fell purposes…”

The dark gloomy lighting recedes, and Page is himself, “Do these words frighten you?” he asks the audience, “They scare the hell out of me.”

It’s a creepy mood-establishing intro that the actor quicky turns friendly. In between donning the skins of these murderers, vengeance-seekers, power-grabbers, and, yes, sociopaths, Page becomes comfortably himself, a charismatic thespian who can toss out theatrical superstitions as well as the occasional bit of shade about his experience in SPIDER MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK. Perhaps also an unstated reference that Iago bears a certain semblance to certain political leaders.

The actor wears a dark burgundy vest and matching denim pants to which he adds a coat, a cloak, a set of glasses or a skullcap (for Shylock) all functionally conceived by Costume Designer Emily Rebholz. The centerpiece of Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenery is a bank of blood red drapes and two standing banks of theatrical lights. Between the smoke, the grinding and general menace of Stacey Derosier’s lights and Darron L. West’s sound, the aura is plenty harrowing. We could probably go a little less heavy on all the devil-explicit pre- and post-show songs, but where Shakespearean villainy is concerned, why be subtle?

Except that in his tour through these men and women, Page is making the opposite point…that these are far more layered and complex than, say the gleefully ghoulish persona of Vice in a morality play that Shakespeare would have seen. Working chronologically, Page  offers us the deformed Richard of Gloucester (from 3 HENRY VI), TITUS ANDRONICUS’S and Aaron the Moor (who he places “in conversation” with Barabbas from Marlowe’s THE JEW OF MALTA to highlight the character similarities and Shakespeare’s possible thievery.) He highlights that the lustful Angelo of MEASURE FOR MEASURE has a conscience even as he is trying to blackmail Isabella into bed. Iago, by contrast, is conscience-free.

While Shakespeare has written each of these devils at least one very explicitly evil monolog, the solo speeches are not always what Page is enacting. He’ll often do both parts of a two-person scene between a villain and the “good” person he is wronging. Whether the person is sandbagging before he shows his colors (Shylock), outright dissembling (Iago) or whether both characters are discovering evil together (the Macbeths), the actor’s character-building is magnificent. Rarely will you see cackling or other shows of outright menace. In Page’s hands, the meek and seemingly reluctant Iago, so loath to air his suspicions, gets Othello right where he is most vulnerable.

The evening carries some surprises. The villain of KING LEAR is not who you would traditionally think it to be. ALL THE DEVILS concludes with a depiction of a character hell-bent on revenge who, again, might not top many lists of classical Shakesperean evil-doers, but who makes total sense in the context of how villains have evolved through the course of Shakespeare’s works.

The rogues gallery of ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE should leave audiences hungry to see more of Patrick Page performing the works of Shakespeare, whether he is playing villains or otherwise. These opportunities won’t be local. The actor has worked regularly at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (where his director Simon Godwin is artistic director). Following the run of ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE at BroadStage, he will headline a production of TITUS ANDRONICUS for New York’s Red Bull Theater from March 17 to April 19.

And as for the question of which “devil” to bring home to mother. If Page is playing them, the answer is easy. All of them.

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE plays through Jan. 25 at 1310 11th St., Santa Monica.

Photo of Patrick Page by Julieta Cervantes.