The Brick Theater Presents DEVILS 8/13-29

The city of Loudon, unlike most of the country, is at peace. While religious wars swept the country and kept the Protestants and the Catholics at each others' throats, the sects live and have lived together without incident in the city for years, primarily due to the charismatic priest Father Urbain Grandier, who acts as a kind of second Governor of the town, loved and respected (despite his frequent and well-known personal transgressions, mostly involving the women of Loudon), but also due to its secure battlements, which keep the city separate and self-sustaining (and whose security has been guaranteed by King Louis the XIII).

Cardinal Richelieu, in Paris, seeking to unify the State and the Catholic Church and have complete control of the country under both, despises Loudon's independence, but with the popular and connected Grandier, and the King's promise, he cannot take the city's walls down and gain control. Until a convent of Ursuline nuns in Loudon suddenly begins exhibiting signs of demonic possession and claiming Grandier as an agent of Hell - a story which no one believes, but has power anyway - and a narrative is set in motion which can only end in madness, violence, hysteria, torture, exorcisms, chaos, destruction, and an execution.

And this is all a true story.

This production of John Whiting's classic 1960 play, The Devils, remains faithful to Whiting's text and vision while combining elements of both his source text, Aldous Huxley's 1952 book The Devils of Loudon, and also Ken Russell's intense, brilliant, and still deeply controversial 1971 film of the play to create a wider image of the societal and personal forces that combine to use religion as a political club and irrational thought to destroy reason as a man and city are eliminated through a lie that no one believes, but all must obey. 23 actors in a small space create a seething, fast-moving portrait of all aspects and classes of a society that come together to create a horrible event, combining the intensity and stomach-churning aspects of the Russell film with a breadth and scope more often found in the work of Robert Altman. A mix of the darkly comic and deeply horrific, Devils is a stew of the beautiful and human mixed with the repulsive and inhumane.

NOTE: This play contains nudity, sexuality, extreme violence and torture, among other potentially disturbing elements. Not for children or people of sensitive natures.

Director/designer Ian W. Hill has created 66 stage productions since 1997 with his company Gemini CollisionWorks (and his collaborative partner Berit Johnson), including works by Vaclav Havel, Richard Foreman, T.S. Eliot, Clive Barker, Mac Wellman, Ronald Tavel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jeff Goode, Mark Spitz, and Edward D. Wood, Jr., as well as several original plays. As a designer (light, sound, projections, sets) and technical/artistic consultant he has worked with many other stage artists and theatres for the past 20 years, and he is currently the technical director of The Brick. He will also be presenting an original play in rep with Devils in August at The Brick: Spacemen from Space: An Exciting New Serial for the Stage in 6 Thrill-Packed Episodes!, a comic pastiche of 1930s-40s b-picture serials.

The cast of this production is
David Arthur Bachrach*, Olivia Baseman*, Lynn Berg*, Lindsey Beth Carter, Jody Dean Edwards, Sarah Malinda Engelke*, Saara Falk, Terrell Green, Ian W. Hill, Justin RG Holcomb*, Michael Jablonski, Norah Elise Johnson, Candace Rachel Lawrence, Michael Marion*, Justin Maruri*, Samuel Muniz, Eric Oleson, Shelley Ray*, Timothy McCown Reynolds*, Noah Schultz, Anna Stromberg, David Watson*, Morgan Anne Zipf
* Appears Courtesy of Actors Equity Association

at The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train / Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train - www.bricktheater.com
August 14, 19, 21, 26, 27, and 28 at 8.00 pm; August 15 and 29 at 2.00 pm

approximately 3 hours long (including two intermissions)
All tickets: $18.00
Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com (212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)