Happy New Year 2024: A Review of the Devilishly Good One Man Show from Patrick Page

By Rodney Hakim of the ‘New York Shakespeare’ social media

It’s the beginning of January 2024, and from the ‘New York Shakespeare’ social media, wishing you all a very Happy New Year!

Our Annual Year in Review and Awards article is coming out soon, but before we get to that, it is imperative to discuss a limited run show that is currently playing in New York City, and has been playing since October. This is, in and of itself, something of a rarity, an ‘end of the year’ show that has such popularity and demand, that it extends and carries over into the next year.

Such is the case with the show in question, the one man show from the star of stage and screen, Patrick Page, ‘All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain’. The show started previews in October 2023, and was only supposed to run through December. But Patrick Page being the ridiculously talented and popular performer that he is, and the show being the solo performance juggernaut that it turned out to be, the run extended, and is now set to go through February 25th.

This means that in these first weeks of January, typically a sleepy period before the Shakespeare performance calendar starts filling up in late January and early February, that ‘All the Devils Are Here’ has the distinction of being one of the only Shakespeare productions playing in New York City at the present moment, which is almost an oxymoron, given the ubiquity of the Bard on the boards in the Big Apple.

Enough alliteration, and on to the point of this all. To borrow a phrase from another show that once ruled the New York City stage, ‘All the Devils Are Here’ is a singular sensation. It is singular in being a one-man show about Shakespeare, in being one of the few Bard based shows playing at the moment, in being a limited run show that extended into the New Year, and in being one of the single most singular single-person shows I have ever seen.

I’ve been around the New York scene for a long time, as a performer, participant, podcaster, and more, but even longer than all of that, as an observer and fan, and in this time, I’ve seen many, many one-person shows come and go. There have been good shows and not so good shows. There have been outstanding shows, with other unique solo riffs on Shakespeare (looking at you, Debra Ann Byrd’s ‘Becoming Othello’ and Keith Hamilton Cobb’s ‘American Moor’), but none quite like ‘All the Devils Are Here’.

In ‘Devils’, actor Patrick Page leads the audience on an 80 minute journey through a number of monologues and soliloquies from some of the most famous (or perhaps infamous) villains in the Shakespearean canon. The show is followed up each night by a 20 minute talk back with Page himself, answering questions from the audience in the intimate space of the DR2 Theatre.

Patrick Page is an incredible actor, as anyone who has been around a New York City stage in the last two decades can attest to. He has deep roots with Shakespeare, having loved, studied, and performed it from his youth, following the footsteps of his father, also a Shakespearean actor.

‘Devils’ is more than just a string of disconnected monologues, though. Page deftly ties a narrative thread throughout the 80 minute evening, tying thoroughly researched historical context to each speech, and detailing where Shakespeare was in his journey as a playwright when each of the monologues (and they plays they come from) was originally written and performed.

The historical context is fascinating, and gives extra dimension to many of the monologues, and a through line to the connection between each piece, and the progression from one to the next.

One of these moments that had the most resonance was Page’s tearful and emotionally raw delivery of Shylock’s famous speech from ‘The Merchant of Venice’, giving added dramatic heft to the character’s words about being a Jew in Venice in the Elizabethan era. I’ve heard this speech dozens of times, from some of the most famous actors of the last quarter century, but in ‘Devils’, it took on additional layers of meaning and power, in light of current world events and the rise of antisemitism.

Going back to my long personal history of seeing one-man shows in New York, the last time I can recall seeing a production like this, with a top-tier Shakespeare actor doing an evening of Shakespeare monologues, was when Patrick Stewart did such a thing in the late 1990s. Patrick Stewart, of course, the famous Shakespeare actor, who at that time was just coming off of his long run as Captain Picard in the ‘Star Trek’ TV series, and off of his starring role in a reversed race Othello in ‘Shakespeare in the Park’, is also a masterful performer, and also gave gorgeous renderings of the various monologues in his show. While Patrick Stewart did include his personal experiences and memorable anecdotes into his evening of monologues, much like Patrick Page does, didn’t include anywhere near the level of historical context that Page imbues into ‘All the Devils Are Here‘. And also, a funny story I love to tell is how I tried to catch a word with Stewart after his show ended, but he disappeared into the night in the back of a limo with the singular word, ‘Engage!’ spoken from the window as the limo whisked him away. Patrick Page patiently answers dozens of questions in the talk back, and is disarmingly honest and forthright in doing so.

Singular has been one of the main words used in this article, and intentionally so. That is because this show is uniquely singular in being one of, if not THE very best single person shows I have ever seen in my long history of Shakespeare fandom. It is an absolute MUST SEE for any Shakespeare fans in or near New York City, any theater fans who want to see one of the top actors of our time give a virtual master class in solo performance, or just for anyone else who appreciates an amazing night of intimate, indelible speeches, an incredible performance, and a singular sensation that demands to be caught before it disappears into the storied annals of New York City theater history.