John Gielgud in The Ages of Man. Ian McKellen in Acting Shakespeare. Stage royalty from across the pond struts one-man Shakespeare on Broadway once in a blue moon. But an American? Since Hadestown, the phrase “the villain of Broadway” has attached to Patrick Page’s name like a Homeric epithet. Heck, he’s even played the Grinch! Yet for his repeatedly extended show All the Devils Are Here (brilliantly directed by Simon Godwin), you’ll have to leave the bright lights in the rear-view mirror. No less than for his starry transatlantic predecessors, Shakespeare is Page’s lifelong passion. Having cut his teeth in regional American Shakespeare festivals, he has notched credits (sometimes multiple) in some two dozen of the canon’s three dozen titles. For showmanship, scholarship, technique, imagination—even, indeed, for command of the fine points of blank verse (but also the prose)—Page easily clears the bar set by his legendary predecessors. And thematically, his script is better focused, chasing the Shakespearean villain’s many avatars through labyrinths of skullduggery, revelation, deception, and self-deception. Richard III is there, alongside Hamlet’s King Claudius, the serially lethal Macbeths, and Iago, Othello’s spinner of lies. But Page’s script remains, in the most creative sense, a work-in-progress, and over the months supporting baddies have come and gone. The comic steward Malvolio of Twelfth Night, whose very name means malice, got cashiered a few minutes back, even as the nameless captain who hangs King Lear’s Cordelia was called out as possibly Shakespeare’s most dastardly figure of all. Almost in passing, the performance reveals Page’s mastery with props and the clothes he wears. More conspicuously, it showcases that deluxe basso profondo of his, unfurled not for hollow display but set to work chasing his characters’ thoughts through labyrinths of enigma and deceit. A tip: stick around for the talkback. —Matthew Gurewitsch

Travels to: the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis (October 12 – November 17, 2024)