The Devil's Law Case

A chap in cloak and whiskers knifes his sister's suitor. The suitor was unwell anyway: a rival spitor gouged him in a duel before the brother came in with a stiletto. Both duelists officially die, secretly recover. Meanwhile the brother begs his sister to pretend she is going to have a child by the richer dead suitor. She pretends she is going to have one by the poorer one. The mother tries to turn her heretofore legitimate son into a bastard because he destroyed the prospective son-in-law who was her prospective lover. A pregnant nun appears on the scene.

The plot runs away with the play. John Webster obviously felt that the quicker he piled on new complexities, the wilder the fans would be. The Devil's Law Case is twelve hours worth of Batman squeezed into two.

The characters involved in this steeplechase haven't any Hamlet-like opportunities. They don't develop passions; they leap from one passion to another. A lady may brutally reject a man, then delightedly choose him. There are a couple of acts and no warnings in between.

The best actors in the Ex production played with what-the-hell flamboyance. Timothy S. Mayer (the Devil's advocate) swept about the stage in a huge blue cape. He was as foxy as a Hollywood villain, as haughty as a Jacobean king. He relished his pronouncements like a small boy relishes his lemon drops. The worst actors stumbled towards self-effacement; Michael Boak (Sanitonella) became no more than an occasional buzz in the ear.

Howard Cutler had nice moments as Romelio, the moneygrubbing pushy brother. He was properly incestuous with his sister and properly encouraging to her suitors. But Romelio is a cynic. He thinks omnipotent dieties don't exist and the aristocracy is a lot of malarkey. The power that operates in the world is a person with money. So he's up tight: if his money disappears, he does too. Cutler's movements onstage didn't convey that anxiety. They had a student looseness that suggested--Every-thing's OK, baby.

Marianne DeKoven (Romelio's sister) didn't burn her bridges and she should have. She played her love scene with little ardor because she knew she'd wind up at the end with a different partner. Her hesitancy only spoils the scene. It didn't make her marriage seem reasonable. James Shuman (Contarino) played the scene with more ardor.

Of the rest of the cast, Janet Leslie played an aging light-lipped neurotic; Francine Stone, a garrulous lady in waiting; Thomas Babe, an intense butcher-surgeon. They were fine.

Director Peter Jaszi didn't let his actors reach heights of lust and malice. But he kept them circulating around Cutler's many-entranced set. And when the lights glowed ominous orange, there were some nifty melodramatic happenings.