It is 1777, and the British army is trying to gain control of the Hudson River valley. Dick Dudgeon (Nadia Brown) is an American gentlemen, but he identifies himself as “the devil’s disciple” and claims to worship Satan. In effect, this means Dick rejects the social niceties of his class, though he has a soft spot for children. When he inherits his father’s estate, the local reverend, Anderson (Tina Chilip), invites Dick to his home, but Anderson is soon called to a parishioner’s deathbed, and Dick is left alone with the reverend’s wife, Judith (Folami Williams). Dick surprises Judith with his sensitivity and respect—the melodramatic devil’s disciple seems to disappear along with the reverend—and when British soldiers come to the door, demanding the arrest and execution of Anderson, he pretends to be the other man and goes in his place. Dick seems as surprised as anyone else by his act of sacrifice.

The Devil’s Disciple is good Shaw, with enough humor and dramatic punch to accommodate his sermonizing about Puritan hypocrisy. There are Wildean epigrams such as, “Martyrdom, sir … is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability,” and these are not limited to the dialogue. In the stage directions, Shaw writes that the Puritans “conceived goodness simply as self-denial,” which was in turn “generalized as covering anything disagreeable,” and thus, “Mrs. Dudgeon, being exceedingly disagreeable, is held to be exceedingly good.”

Unfortunately, in his adaptation, director David Staller has highlighted the sermon at the expense of the humor (and the drama). He has restored a speech, written by Shaw during the McCarthy era, where Dick expostulates on freedom, and he has added a framing device that includes jokes about cat ladies, in case the connection to contemporary politics was unclear. A line about the United States being a “land that will never be home to kings or tyrants or demagogues” was greeted by the audience with knowing murmurs, and “Together, we have a power we’re only just beginning to understand … We have work to do!” received a round of applause. The problem is that I doubt anyone in attendance is going to change their response to Donald Trump because of a matinee at Theatre Row. The moment is therefore not galvanizing but self-congratulatory. The audience pats itself on the back for not being one of those people, the subject of Shaw’s scorn.

As a result, the vessel, the play itself, is sacrificed; for the first ten minutes, the actors are speaking so fast that we hardly have time to digest story, let alone character. From what I can tell, Staller has cut some good material—including a fuller reading of the will—for the sake of more preaching. The problem is that he is preaching to the converted. There is no danger in denouncing tyranny before those who abhor it. A real test of the message, and the messenger, would be a performance and a production that addressed the skeptical.

The Devil’s Disciple ran through November 23rd at Theatre Row.  410 W. 42nd Street  New York, NY. 1 hour 40 minutes. No intermission. Photograph by Carol Rosegg.