Beast

After too long away it was exciting to reconnect with the good people at Lazarus Theatre and

join their Engine room for an exploration of John Webster’s labyrinthine revenge thriller ‘The

White Devil’.

The actors and creatives gathered in Lazarus’ brand new workspace to read and begin to

unpack this beast of a play. The word ‘beast’ is appropriate here as one of the first things the

reading uncovered was how much of the play’s imagery is steeped in the natural world, in

particular in the destructive power of nature and animals.

The actors read on their feet and were encouraged to use appropriate props. We stopped

between acts to digest, discuss and pinpoint areas for further investigation or clues for

potential staging and performance.

In terms of structure it became clear that the play is a bit unusual. It is massively

long-probably one of the longest in the repertoire, with a final act that almost seems to

belong to another play, combining philosophy, games-playing, disguise and violent death (as

you would expect at the climax of a Jacobean tragedy). Another odd point is that its dramatic

highlight seems to come halfway through the play. All sorts of questions were raised about

what would need to be cut to ensure a running time of less than six hours!

We found there is plenty more to explore in this dense, ambiguous and fascinating play and

another session in the engine room for Webster’s White Devil might well be on the cards.

After a wet day full of revenge and murder we ended things with chocolate cake for everyone

to celebrate the Artistic Director’s birthday. It would have been interesting to see what

dramatic use Webster would put the cake to.

Stephen Ma

cNeice