John Webster's play
The White Devil is a bit of a mess.
Webster usually collaborated as a playwright, and The White Devil, which premiered at the Red Bull Theatre in 1612,
might have been his first solo work, which could explain its rather complicated
nature.
The plot, based
loosely on events surrounding the historical Italian noblewoman Vittoria
Accoramboni, is ridiculously complicated, and filled with the fantastical
instruments of death Webster helped to make popular in Jacobean revenge
tragedies. According to the play's printed preface, it was a failure when first
performed at the open-air Red Bull. When it was revived at the indoor Cockpit
Theatre in 1630, however, it was a success.
Webster seems to
have been ahead of his time. The play requires the intimacy of a small, indoor
theatre to get its full effect, and it looks forward to other bloody revenge
tragedies like Thomas Middleton's Women
Beware Women, Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling, and Webster's own The Duchess of Malfi, as well as John Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. A portrait is
perfumed with poison, and when a woman kisses it, she is murdered. A death is
faked with bullet-less pistols. In the final bloody slaughter, a brother and
sister bound to a pillar meet their ends with tragic defiance.
Years ago, when
I saw the show performed by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, it was
a revelation. In spite of the labyrinthine plot, I was able to follow every
twist and turn. When a conjuror had a character put on a charmed nightcap and
see visions of murders being committed far away, the audience just went with
it. Seeing the dumb shows performed before our very eyes in a dark, intimate
space, created an atmosphere charged with electricity. We were being treated to a glimpse of what might have happened in the Cockpit
so many years ago. The costumes were a mixture of modern and period, but the
feel of the play was pure magic.
I was very
excited when I heard that the Red Bull Theater Company was going to be doing The White Devil this year. The company
is named for the open-air playhouse where the show was first performed, and Red Bull specializes in the Jacobean aesthetic. Lately, the company has strayed a bit from
its mission statement to focus on Jacobean drama and related work, stretching
concepts of Jacobean aesthetic to produce such plays as Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector. They usually
do good work, though, and while I was a bit surprised that Red Bull founder Jesse
Berger wouldn't be directing, the director for The White Devil, Louisa Proske, has a long list of opera credits,
so I remained hopeful.
While the play
is still worth seeing, it didn't quite measure up to the Pittsburgh production
of my memory. The piece is done entirely modern, with beautiful contemporary
costumes designed by Beth Goldenberg. Virtual Reality goggles replace the
charmed nightcap, and a tournament becomes a video game the characters play in
celebration. The opening scene takes on the feeling of a video conference call,
with a massive projection of a character's face on the set. The video, complete
with intentional slips into poor quality for verisimilitude, isn't poorly done,
but the production tends to lean on it like a crutch.
There are some
good performances, though, chief among them Derek Smith as Lodovico, the
banished count who enacts revenge upon Vittoria and her brother Flamineo. Lisa
Birnbaum is stunning as Vittoria, the titular White Devil, though that part can
be upstaged by the role of her cunning brother Flamineo, played here by
Broadway veteran Tommy Schrider. The other part that tends to shine is
Monticelso, the powerful cardinal who later becomes pope in the play. Robert
Cuccioli plays the churchman with a perfect mixture of gravitas and hypocrisy.
The White Devil isn't the only literary work to tell the
story of the ill-fated Vittoria. The French novelist Stendhal and the German Romantic Ludwig Tieck both had their own takes on the 16th-century beauty who
came from a family of impoverished nobility, went to Rome to make her fortune, and
married the nephew of a cardinal.
The powerful Duke of Bracciano fell in love with her, and her husband ended up murdered,
probably with the help of Vittoria's own brother.
