George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple is revived in this electrifying new adaptation written by Mark Giesser at Southwark Playhouse Borough. Against the chaos of The Philippine – American War, otherwise known as “America’s First Vietnam”, the world premiere of The Devil May Care is a timely exploration of Western power, the ripples of which we are still feeling today.
Mark Giesser talks with A Youngish Perspective on this new play.
The Devil May Care is adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. What was it that drew you to this text as a source?
Shaw’s core story is a very powerful one: a disreputable man arrested in a case of mistaken identity chooses to sacrifice his life for a man he barely knows. Shaw complicates this central dramatic decision wonderfully by not giving his anti-hero a clear answer as to why he makes the choice, and by giving the other man’s wife the agonising choice of risking the death of her husband if she tries to correct the mistake. Drama, romance and some classic Shavian political and social observations and ironies – hard to resist!
Your adaptation sets the action of the play in the Philippine-American war – could you tell us a bit about this choice?
Shaw set his play during the American Revolution. He explored the conduct of the British Empire as it reached for its pinnacle, which it had achieved when Shaw wrote the play in the late 1890s. In Shaw’s world, Britain’s policies dominated world geopolitics. In our world, the policies of the United States tend to dominate. Thus I decided to move Shaw’s story forward a century to the pivotal time when the United States set out to create its own empire. It stumbled into its ‘first Vietnam’ in an attempt to deny the Philippine people their independence after centuries of Spanish occupation. It’s a conflict not much talked about and so I thought it would provide a fresh angle for Shaw’s story.
One of the key questions at the centre of The Devil May Care is the line between good and evil. How challenging is it to address such a large question on the stage?
It’s always very challenging to deal in these kinds of questions without getting too high up on a soapbox and lecturing to the audience. Shaw is certainly the master of these questions. I tried to follow him as well as I could by focusing as he did on the emotional issues between the characters and letting those interactions draw the audience into their own conclusions about where that particular line falls.
How does this play compare to the other shows you have put on throughout your career – would you say historical plays are your key interest?
They are. I’ve always been drawn to history as a subject – as it’s been said, the past is
another country, and not always with clearly defined borders. It’s vital to understand where our world comes from and how what’s gone before may help us to understand where we might be heading. I love to visit that other country and find stories there that haven’t been much told. So The Devil May Care follows this approach in my previous writing. Even when I’ve used a modern setting, I’ve found ways of including an historical angle or character. By extension, when I look at other people’s work to stage, stories set in a different era catch my eye.
As a director, how do you prepare your actors to handle historical material accurately and sensitively?
I try to give them a firm foundation in the history behind the story as best that history can be verified, and to draw them into that particular world so that they can begin to identify with where their characters are coming from. Often that’s a different normality from what they relate to in the present day. For example, one of the issues in The Devil May Care is racism.
Of course we deal with that in our world, but not always in the same way as we did over a century ago. So in terms of fighting for their characters, some of our cast have to engage in the difficult task of overcoming their own distastes in order to inhabit someone whose attitudes and actions may be repellent to us but don’t negate the character’s idea of being a decent person.
Lastly, what would you like audiences to take away from the play?
On a fundamental character level, it’s an all-too-human tendency to judge people in the
broad strokes of good person versus bad without seeing the nuances. And on a larger level, just because our government says its actions are for the benefit of protecting and advancing our cherished way of life, don’t necessarily believe it at face value. Finally, I’d like them simply to take with them the deep pleasure of having enjoyed a good story told by top-notch actors taking a deep pleasure in telling it to them.