Ensemble Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli
Review by Simon Jenner, January 14th 2025
Buying then colonising the Philippines in 1899 just as Trump proposes doing that to Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada? This play could hardly prove more timely. The Devil May Care, adapted from Bernard Shaw’s 1897 The Devil’s Disciple, by director and writer Mark Giesser is an update Shaw would approve. Giesser directs his own adaptation at the Southwark Borough Little till February 1st.
Giesser has to make his version work, and in doing so triumphs in some scenes, though leaves a few transposed in psychological limbo. Shaw’s now crimped between three new scenes: two opening each new act, one ending the play. The cast gleefully multi-role here, depicting Kipling (Callum Woodhouse) and urbane Vice President Roosevelt (Richard Lynson), and various journalists.
It’s bustling satire, vivid with context as Kipling and his repellent “Take up the white man’s burden”, taken up in turn by Izyan Hay in a biting counterblast, produce a fizzing Pacific overture to the work. Giesser rises to Shavian irony, and if few can compete with Shaw’s wit, Giesser has filleted Shaw’s text to leave the best of it and set-pieces as they are. It plays for two hours with interval.
Though a huge success in its time, it’s easy to see why the original play’s fallen out of the Shaw canon. Set in 1777’s revolutionary America it contains a brilliant conceit carried over into this version: that an ostensibly devil-worshipping free-thinker would substitute himself and die for the renegade vicar, himself far more suited to captain a militia. It’s a knotty psychology. The devil’s man is prepared to die Christ-like for his opponent. In both versions he says he doesn’t know why, though Giesser pushes one reason. Shaw’s original is touching when the humane British general, now captured, affirms their swapped livery. In 1899 though, this is less thrillingly transgressive than when the devil-ish Dick Dudgeon announces himself to a swooning congregation. Religion hardly counts now, free-thinking’s the norm.
Jill Grenacre as Adele Connroe, Enzo Benvenuti as Elias Conroe. Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli
Luzon, the Philippines 1899. The renamed Richard Conroe (Callum Woodhouse, best known as Leslie Durrell in The Durrells) returns after 15 years like a bad cent just as his family have mourned the death of an uncle Peter, shot for resistance; and the estranged father the same day of a heart attack. The news that Richard inherits everything via a scrappy new will comes as a shock to his colonial settler mother Adele Conroe (Jill Greenacre). As it does to Richard’s younger brother, stiff Harvard graduate Lieutenant Elias Conroe (Enzo Benvenuti), also part of the invading army. Who’s oddly also a Theosophist (this doesn’t sit, reincarnation or no). Though the news is less unwelcome to cousin Isabel Conroe (Izyan Hay). Illegitimate child of the uncle and a Philippine woman, she’s more than a poetry reader.
Woodhouse charms like a young Orson Welles might have, had he taken this part. Softly spoken, his rationale is poised, mordantly funny, sometimes brutally sarcastic, relishing the laconic irony Richard’s later decision confers on his family. Apart from devil-worship, which no-one takes seriously, it’s difficult now to see why the family loathe him so much that when he pretends to be the renegade British vicar, with a price on his head, the family collude. In the original, his devil-worship’s enough to earn his 18th century mother’s hatred. But here too, the brother’s no dolt (as he was in Shaw) but a stiff Harvard-man-turned-ramrod-soldier. Family stiffness alone can’t quite convince us they hate the bendy one so much.
Three plots jostle. Giesser’s political threads are ably compressed though it makes for a packed 55-minute first act. The military occupation is clearly dispatched, with U.S. imperial ambitions abetted by the colonists trumpeting racist assumptions mingled with the role of women (Giesser recruits modern Shavian women’s roles here). Power structures are irradiated like a nasty barium meal. Family dynamics, disrupted by a different age with characters altered, need a more convincing foil.
Luckily the third theme, courtroom drama amidst amatory confusion, sets up the best acting of the company. British vicar’s wife Judith Prestwick (Beth Burrows), against her will, feeling neglected, is drawn to Richard. Giesser’s changed Judith from a slightly depthless woman driven to heights of self-knowledge in the original to a woman who’s literally barred from the bar, a natural lawyer.
Burrows relishes this: precise in every tonal switch, she brings Judith effortlessly to life. Each look shows what she’s thinking. Her cut-through diction shades everything; she can rise to passion – in advocacy or intimacy – that never loses alertness. She and Woodhouse parry and argue, Richard alarmed at what he’s aroused as much as he admires Judith’s logic and eloquence, as well as political grasp. Here the paradox of British subjects resisting U.S. imperialism when a quarter of the globe is under the British yoke isn’t lost on Giesser’s characters. They point it up in his additional scenes.
Beth Burows (Judith Prestwick), Callum Woodhouse (Richard Conroe) Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli
Judith feels deserted by crusading husband Paul Prestwick (Richard Lynson, who particularly enjoys his alter ego, General MacArthur, father of that General MacArthur of “I shall return” fame re the Philippines under Japanese rule). Lynson’s fine as the diffident-seeming but secretly decisive resistance middleman; though as suave MacArthur he dispatches urbanity to his batoned-up lieutenant, with the grace to be aware of his hypocrisy, if comfortable with it.
Benvenuti’s Elias is all of a piece, with a stentorian West Point parade-ground manner. Indeed Giesser’s neatly conflated two Shaw characters: Richard’s challenged brother with a ramrod British staff officer, Swindon. Benvenuti ensures Elias is a drip off the old sour block of his mother. Greenacre’s bitter Adele is a shrunken racist foil to both younger women. Greenacre secretes disdain; even praise for Richard rasps like an adder’s hiss. Burrows instinctively recoils from her, whilst patronised and abused Isabel keeps very close counsel. Making her stage debut Hay’s best moments come when she shines out in the satire set-pieces where she multi-roles; but also when as Isabel she reveals her life and feelings.
Indeed despite age difference Hay’s Isabel conspiring revolution with Prestwick suggests they’d be ideally matched were it not for the even wider age-gap between them (Prestwick is 20 years older than Judith). Especially as Prestwick has never confided in Judith. And Giesser’s set up Judith and Richard so well that if there’s to be a return to the marital status quo, and Richard become Isabel’s guardian (whatever that entails), we might feel cheated.
Either way, the second half really picks up and sparkles, particularly with the courtroom scene and aftermath. Groundwork in the first pays off, though it’s still a touch top-heavy.
Beth Burows (Judith Prestwick), Callum Woodhouse (Richard Conroe). Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli
Ensemble Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli
Intellectual Property’s set is effective: rugs and props. And a very fine if uncredited quasi-mural. Costume designer Alice McNicholas carries much period detail, particularly the dresses.
Sam M Owen’s lighting enjoys a few spectral dawn moments, especially with Woodhouse left alone. One wishes atmosphere might penetrate elsewhere too, given the chiaroscuro of the tropics. George Sztuka’s sound refernces Sousa marches mercilessly.
Do see this particularly for an outstanding performance from Burrows and an exceptionally fine one from Woodhouse. This whets my appetite to see an edited original Devil’s Disciple. Re-reading only confirms it was a hit for good reason.
This adaptation remains though an exhilarating reminder of what a difference a century makes. A newly-freed country glowing with a constitution rooted in the (albeit compromised) Enlightenment, becomes an oppressive imperial power. Another century and its threats to engulf the world in perpetual night shows the devil might care very much indeed. Especially should he ever get to occupy the White House. Ah.
Beth Burows (Judith Prestwick), Callum Woodhouse (Richard Conroe). Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli
Ensemble Photo Credit Lidia Crisafulli