\u201cHadestown,\u201d <\/a>in which he played Hades, ruler of the underworld, with a sexy, tyrannical malevolence and a voice so deep it resonated as darkly as Leonard Cohen\u2019s. And he\u2019s had prior success creating outlandish villains on Broadway with the Grinch and, from \u201c<\/b>Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,\u201d Norman Osborn\/Green Goblin. <\/p>\nBut Shakespeare has long been a touchstone. He\u2019s dedicated himself to the work, as was evident in his triumphant turn in the Shakespeare Theatre Company\u2019s 2023 production of \u201cKing Lear\u201d in Washington, D.C., directed by Simon Godwin. The producers of which had the good sense to stream worldwide for all of us outside the nation\u2019s capital who wanted to experience the thunderclap of Page\u2019s Lear.<\/p>\n
Godwin, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company and an associate director of the National Theatre in London, leaves little distance between Page and the audience in his staging of \u201cAll the Devils Are Here.\u201d The direct-address simplicity of the production serves the fluidity of Page\u2019s performance. The actor transitions from talking about the characters to becoming them with just a shift in his posture and vocal tone. <\/p>\n
Proximity is the point. Shakespeare\u2019s bad guys, with a few notable exceptions, are quite like you and me, which is to say they are human. Their worst deeds are the product of desires and fears that aren\u2019t foreign to any of us. We might not be capable of atrocities, but in our dreams we\u2019re all occasionally raving lunatics, giving vent to feelings we keep buried away in the light of day.<\/p>\n
Page makes the tendentious claim that Shakespeare invented the villain, then walks it back to explain exactly what he means. His thesis is that Shakespeare early in his playwriting career followed the prevailing models of villainy. These vicious and vindictive antagonists tended to be outsiders, Jews (in the case of Christopher Marlowe\u2019s \u201cThe Jew of Malta\u201d), Moors (such as Aaron the Moor in Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cTitus Andronicus\u201d) or the physically deformed (most notably, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who first appeared in Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cHenry VI\u201d and proved to be such a hit that he was given his own play, \u201cRichard III\u201d).<\/p>\n
We get a taste of these Machiavels, who have none of the misgivings about vengeance that will plague Hamlet. Page portrays them without much introspection. They tell you what they\u2019re going to do and then they bloody well do it. They can be scathingly ironic, alert to every hypocrisy that corroborates their cynical worldview, and even seductive in a perverse, power-mad way.<\/p>\n
For these reasons, they are, like the arch-villains of \u201cBatman,\u201d the most entertaining characters in their stories. This lawless crew shares dramaturgical DNA with the vice figures from medieval morality plays, personifications of sinfulness who would confide their schemes to the audience and make theatergoers their co-conspirators in a riveting game that obviously left its mark on a young Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
Iago, one of Shakespeare\u2019s greatest villains, is an updated version of this stock character. Page consults Martha Stout\u2019s book \u201cThe Sociopath Next Door\u201d to understand the character\u2019s lack of empathy and remorse. But then he enacts the scene in which Iago subtly poisons Othello\u2019s mind into believing that his wife is having an affair with a handsome lieutenant. Sociopaths like Iago may be an empty shell of evil, but they can also be ingenious manipulators. Shakespeare put all his understanding of human nature into Iago\u2019s brainwashing master class.<\/p>\n
But before Page reaches Iago, he spends time with Shylock from the \u201cThe Merchant of Venice.\u201d Shakespeare humanizes the Elizabethan stage stereotype of the villainous Jew by giving Shylock ample reason for wanting to get back at his Christian persecutors. Marlowe treats Barabas in \u201cThe Jew of Malta\u201d as a farcical demon, but Shakespeare has Shylock ask, \u201cHas a Jew not eyes? \u2026 If you prick us, do we not bleed?\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, Shakespeare is having his cake and eating it too. But Page\u2019s portrayal, perhaps the most complete in his gallery, makes a convincing case of the playwriting leap forward.<\/p>\n
From \u201cHamlet,\u201d Page gives us Claudius on his knees praying for pardon he knows he doesn\u2019t deserve. (\u201cMay one be pardoned and retain the offense?\u201d he asks himself, already knowing the answer.) Here we see that even the most sealed-off conscience can be invaded by second thoughts.<\/p>\n
Lady Macbeth has no such qualms when she\u2019s summoning evil spirits to unsex her in \u201cMacbeth.\u201d She knows conventional morality is a liability and begs these forces \u201cto stop up the access and passage to remorse\u201d so that nothing will impede the murderous plot that\u2019s brewing within her.<\/p>\n
To establish the right note of terror on a fog-strewn set by Arnulfo Maldonado that resembles the private chamber of a writer or madman, Page begins with Lady Macbeth\u2019s chilling incantation. He returns to the tragedy later in his survey after guilt has alienated the Macbeths from each other and they find themselves trapped in a nightmare of their own making. <\/p>\n
King Lear mournfully wonders, \u201cIs there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?\u201d Shakespeare can\u2019t explain evil, but he can look at it directly. And what he sees, Page argues, is our own reflection \u2014 humanity, in all its fractured and flailing self-destructive foolishness. <\/p>\n
The case Page smoothly makes is a convincing one. He is a pliant enough actor to daub each portrait with just enough psychological color. It\u2019s not easy to do justice to such complex roles in quick succession. The genius of these troubling characters is embedded in their full dramatic contexts, requiring more than rhetorical flourishes and vocal modulations to bring them to life.<\/p>\n
But by collectively presenting them in such a vivid and intelligent manner, Page urges us to see these devils for what they are \u2014 an inextricable part of our collective story, as any perusal of the day\u2019s political headlines will disturbingly attest.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\u2018All the Devils Are Here\u2019<\/p>\n
Where:<\/b> BroadStage, 1310 11th Street, Santa Monica<\/p>\n
When:<\/b> 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. (Check website for exceptions.) Ends Jan 25.<\/p>\n
Ticket:<\/b> Start at $45<\/p>\n
Contact:<\/b> (310) 434-3200 or broadstage.org<\/a> <\/p>\nRunning time:<\/b> 1 hour, 30 minutes<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s something refreshingly 19th century about Patrick Page\u2019s traveling Shakespeare seminar, \u201cAll the Devils Are Here,\u201d which opened Thursday at BroadStage in Santa Monica. The show, a touring tutorial he created and performs solo, allows Page the opportunity to animate with barnstorming crackle a rogue\u2019s gallery of Shakespearean scoundrels. Villains come quite naturally to this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2238713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2238712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/All-the-Devils-Are-Here-review-Patrick-Page-and-the.com2F912F822F923b9b7b4e19bc2ea650de46.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2238712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2238714,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238712\/revisions\/2238714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2238713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}