Nadia Brown, Tina Chilip, Susan Cella, Teresa Avia Lim, and Folami Williams Photo by Carol Rosegg

The title character is Dick Dudgeon, the ne'er-do-well scion of a puritanical New England family, who has returned to his family home for the reading of his father's will. Much to everyone's surprise, including Dick's, he has inherited the bulk of the estate. This allows him to be rid of his hateful mother and to realign his rebelliousness to the cause of the American rebellion against the British. In that pursuit, he winds up being mistaken for a Protestant minister who has befriended him, a man who is to be hanged for treason by the British. When Dick is arrested, he is willing to let himself be executed instead.

There is ultimately a happy ending, following on the heels of more complications and side stories within the convoluted plot, which this production bravely attempts to stitch together into a logical whole. Staller has provided a framing device in which a narrator (Folami Williams) has found an old journal in the 18th century house she has inherited. She has, as well, inherited the ghosts of three other women (Susan Cella, Tina Chilip, and Teresa Avia Lim). The four of them, along with Nadia Brown in the role of Dick Dudgeon, will relate the tale to us over the course of 100 minutes (no intermission). The narrator and each of the "ghosts" play multiple roles, switching genders as needed for the plot.

Shaw himself has not made it easy, what with plot twists and turns worthy of a Dickens novel (remember A Tale of Two Cities and the roguish Sydney Carton?). Unfortunately, little clarity is gained in this production of The Devil's Disciple, despite the best efforts of a game cast to multitask their way to coherence.

Nadia Brown gives us a Dick Dudgeon who seems more of a Peter Pan than a follower of Satan but who is nevertheless compelling in the thinly developed role. But it is during the second half of the play, with Susan Cella's dry and witty performance as General Burgoyne, that we can see a direction the production might have taken. The lines are funny; the performance is as sharp as a tack. And for a while, things veer in the direction of, say, Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers farcical take on the follies of war.

That's the sort of tone that would make the production work for contemporary audiences, without adding in overt references and easy laughs related to the current political situation (e.g. "I don't have any children. Just a cat."). David Staller has frequently shown himself to be a masterful adapter of Shaw, especially in bringing out his humor and humanity (e.g. in last season's delightful Arms and the Man, 2022's Candida, and the previous year's Mrs. Warren's Profession). But, unfortunately, the breezy style only takes hold intermittently in The Devil's Advocate. Let Shaw speak for himself or go all out with a "suggested by" farce.