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On Broadway, Patrick Page usually plays bad guys, most notably the monstrous villains of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and “Hadestown.” Elsewhere, though, he is best known as one of America’s greatest classical actors, blessed with a bass voice so resonant that it can actually make your theater seat shake—I’ve felt it—without benefit of amplification.
To capture such a force of nature on a screen is no small trick, but “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” a solo show written and performed by Mr. Page and produced by Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, does the job with seeming ease. Not only does it clearly convey the immense force of his stage presence, but it is also an illuminating introduction to an insufficiently appreciated aspect of Shakespeare’s genius….
The three characters in Brian Friel’s “Molly Sweeney,” one of whom is a blind woman whose sight is temporarily restored by surgery, speak to the audience but never to one another. This makes the play a natural for webcasting, though it is not nearly so easy to stage as it looks at first glance. Fortunately, Lantern Theater Company’s revival, directed by Peter DeLaurier and taped in an empty theater on a semi-naturalistic set designed by Nick Embree, is so fine as to be worthy of unapologetic comparison with the Irish Rep’s 2020 video version…
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Read the whole thing here.Patrick Page talks about All the Devils Are Here: