Broadway star Patrick Page gets under the skin of evil in 'All the Devils Are Here' at the Guthrie

The celebrated Broadway actor shares his thoughts on Shakespeare, evil and what Minnesotans can expect during his monthlong spell.

By Rohan Preston Star Tribune

October 17, 2024 — 8:30am

He's a titan of the American stage whose deep bass voice, whether speaking or singing, seems to emanate from the pits of hell.

And that's fitting, since Patrick Page's Broadway roles include the underworld overlord Hades in "Hadestown" and the Grinch in "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas." He also played the Green Goblin in "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and Scar in "The Lion King."

Notice a pattern?

While he has become known for characters that thrive in wickedness, Page has not fretted about being typecast. In fact, he relishes playing baddies so much that he leans into it in his solo show, "All the Devils Are Here," which opens Thursday at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater.

The play chronicles villains in Shakespeare and speaks to the singer, actor and playwright's own love affair with the Bard.

"My father [Robert Page] was an actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when I was 3 or 4, and there was always fun to be had onstage," Page said, noting his early and enduring influences. "Shakespeare holds up a mirror to nature, and as he does that, he finds himself in all these characters, like the man who would take a pound of flesh or the man who would murder his own brother in order to have the kingdom and marry the woman he loves."

We caught up with Page at his home in New York City by phone just before he jetted off to Minneapolis. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: How did "Devils" come about?

A: I have a passion for Shakespeare. He has brought so much joy to my life, I want to share it with people.

Q: You've played many of Shakespeare's villains. Why take the plays in chronological order?

A: When I'm in a play by Shakespeare, I'm very much aware of what period in his career the play was written. He's a different playwright in 1590 [when he first entered the scene] than he is in 1605. You have to know the man you're working for if you want to serve him properly.

Q: So, this sounds like it is as much an examination of Shakespeare's villains as about Shakespeare himself.

A: When Shakespeare was a boy, it was commonly thought that if you did bad things, you were a bad person. They were evil others. But Shakespeare was a humanist. And he didn't just want to present stock villains. He thought, wait a minute, maybe these people who did terrible things are more like me.

Q: Is it fair to assume you identify with Shakespeare the actor as much as the playwright.

A: He was always asking about the motivation — why, why. If you look at Aaron [the Moor] in "Titus Andronicus" and "Richard III" — they're based in the tradition of Christopher Marlowe. It's really when you get to that period after the plague and after the Dark Lady of the sonnets that we see a difference. In 1596, all of a sudden, Shakespeare's a new man.

Q: In "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human," Harold Bloom talks about how Shakespeare's characters change after gaining consciousness and self-knowledge. It sounds like your play builds on that work.

A: Shakespeare's villains grow more and more aware of themselves and more human over the period from 1590 to 1605. Remember, Shakespeare's work grew out of the morality play, the homiletic tradition in which there was a moral that the playwright wanted the audience to come away with. In other words, the playwright wanted to convert the audience, which is not what Shakespeare does. Shakespeare takes a question that's complex and sets it before us. So, by the time we get to the end of his career we've gone from these characters who embody vice, like what Shakespeare grew up with, to fully fledged three-dimensional human beings who do terrible things.

Q: I'm thinking of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice," asking "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" Shakespeare bucks what was popular during his lifetime in Elizabethan England.

A: Shylock is the perfect example. The audience comes in expecting to see a character like [Christopher Marlowe's] "The Jew of Malta" — wicked to the core — and instead gets the most human person in the play. Shylock is a person who you can pick right up out of "The Merchant of Venice," put him on the A train, and you will know how he'll behave. He's fully written.

Q: How, then, do you explain Iago in "Othello"? What motivates him?

A: Iago is a kind of brick wall that Shakespeare runs into. He is in fact outside the normal spectrum of human behavior. The defining characteristics of a psychopath are the lack of conscience and the lack of empathy. In my show, I take you through the clinical tool used to diagnose psychopathy. Point by point, it matches Iago's behavior. We throw the word genius around — like for someone who can observe the New York skyline for 45 seconds and draw it in intricate detail. Shakespeare was a great observer of human nature. And he came up on this psychopath in Iago.

Q: Can you tell us what more might we expect from "Devils"?

A: The play is an investigation. It's a hero's journey with Shakespeare as the protagonist growing from a place of innocence and naivete to wisdom. That deeper knowledge includes a despair because of what it reveals about human nature but eventually ends with grace. The other investigation is my own, and it puts the events together. How did Shakespeare get from "Titus Andronicus" to "The Merchant of Venice." It's a kind of detective story.