Crisp and elegant as ever, George Bernard Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell” has been revived for a welcome series of performances in the downtown Storefront Theater.
The production is the work of ShawChicago, which since 1994 under auspices of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, has offered concert readings of the master’s plays. (Its roots actually go deeper, back to 1956, when Lois Weisberg, a devoted Shavian and now Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for Chicago, sparked a centennial celebration of the playwright’s birth.)
The format chosen by director Robert Scogin for the ShawChicago version closely follows that of the landmark production inaugurated by director Charles Laughton in the 1950s, which featured Laughton, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead, all dressed in black formal wear, reading from the text on music stands placed in front of their chairs.
A huge, surprise theater hit in its time, on tour, on Broadway and on records, it remains the definitive performance of this play-length third act of an even longer work, the 1905 “Man and Superman.”
A staged reading by impeccably articulate actors was the ideal way to present the piece. Very much a play of and on words, it is easily detachable from the larger play, and, since it takes place in what the author carefully mapped out as the “utter void” of eternity, it can be presented without elaborate scenery.
In this dream sequence, Don Juan, the rakish lover of “Don Giovanni,” is transformed into Shaw’s champion of “the life force,” that insatiable yearning for betterment and improvement that will lead eventually to the “superior being,” or Superman.
Fuzzy as this concept is, it offered Shaw an opportunity to engage in a stimulating conversational rondo, speckled with aphorisms, epigrams and bons mots.
Opposing Don Juan in debate is Lucifer himself, the sly fellow whose kingdom seeks to lull its inhabitants away from the rigors of the life force with the pleasures of beauty and love. Also engaging in the nearly two-hour talk marathon are Dona Ana, once Don Juan’s conquest and now dead at 77, who emerges as the eternal female/mother figure, and her father, the bluff, cheery Commander (whom Don Juan had killed), seeking refuge from the purities of heaven with a quick foray into the beguiling attractions of hell.
The actors, immaculately turned out in their formal attire, are the bearded Michael McAlister as the chipper Commander; Tony Dobrowolski as the enticing devil; Terence Gallagher, who, as Don Juan, drives forward Shaw’s argument with undiminishable vigor, and Adrianne Cury, whose imperious Dona Ana takes Scogin’s forceful direction perhaps a little too far in the direction of overplaying.
The performance is free, with reservations required, and it includes an excellent printed program, dotted with essays and notes on the play.
And, if this taste of Shaw whets your appetite for more, stay tuned for “Man and Superman,” which the Remy Bumppo company will present in a separate, fully staged production, without the “Don Juan in Hell” segment, opening Sunday in the upstairs theater of Victory Gardens.
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“Don Juan in Hell”
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When: Through Jan. 22
Where: ShawChicago at Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph St.
Phone: 312-409-5605