Excerpt from Having a
Hell of a Time
When Satan takes the stage,
audiences wind up with angelic smiles
by William Henry
III
His company may not be much esteemed in heaven, but, from Eve onward, mere mortals have found
Sata a singularly seductive fellow--spookily charming, mordantly funny, even sexy in a
sulphur-scented way. Writers have been especially beguiled, from Marlowe and Milton to Shaw and
Stephen Vincent Benet. Indeed, while putting God on display as a character is normally a guarantee
of literary disaster, it sometimes seems that stories about his arch-opposite just can't miss. Presumably
there is a sound theological basis for all this: virtue could hardly be considered virtuous if it were also
indisputably fun, while a patently offensive Old Nick would have trouble procuring the ruin of
souls.
Some playwrights. like Shel Silverstein in The Devil and Billy Markham, presume that Mr.
Scratch has nothing to teach mankind: the sensible response is to spot the fiend's tricks and escape
perdition. Other dramatists, like David Mamet in Bobby Gould in Hell, recall that Beelzebub
is a fallen angel and reckon he must be something of a moral philosopher. Both authors seem to think
nothing could be more instructive that a sojourn in Hades to enhance the remainder of a life back on
earth. They give that opportunity not only to the title characters of their two one-act plays but also,
vicariously, to audiences in a double bill that opened last week at New York City's Lincoln
Center.
Billy Markham is a talking blues about a failed songwriter who decides teh devil could not
possibly be any worse than the music publishers and producers who have thwarted his career. A
gambler, boozer, womanizer and general hellion, Markham tosses away eternity in exchange for a
single, futile roll of the dice, then squanders what reprieves are offered in unrepentant revelry. He
nonetheless stumps Satan twice, escaping the first time and settling down the second time into a
perverse sort of domestic bliss. Markham's good-ole-boy world view is distasteful: women are treated
as property, and both defeats of the devil depend on the notion that homosexuality is a fate worse
than damnation. But Silverstein's script, told in verse with occasional bursts of music, is rowdy and
rousing and raunchily uproarious, especially in a song about a gala party where saints and sinners
mingle("Richard III is comparing his hump with Quasimodo.") The sole performer, as both Markham
and his demonic adversary, is Dennis Locorriere, erstwhile singer-songwriter of the pop group Dr.
Hook. His energy is boundless, his timing flawless, his depravity seemingly bottomless in this
bewitching romp.
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