Review: Patrick Page finds Shakespeare's villains disturbingly human in 'All the Devils Are Here'

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There’s something refreshingly 19th century about Patrick Page’s traveling Shakespeare seminar, “All the Devils Are Here,” which opened Thursday at BroadStage in Santa Monica.The show, a touring tutorial he created and performs solo, allows Page the opportunity to animate with barnstorming crackle a rogue’s gallery of Shakespearean scoundrels.Villains come quite naturally to this stage veteran, who might not smack his lips when impersonating evil, but he certainly doesn’t stint on the flamboyant color.

An American Shakespearean who can hold his own with the Brits, he combines mellifluous diction with muscular imagination.Page received a Tony nomination for his performance in the musical “Hadestown,” in which he played Hades, ruler of the underworld, with a sexy, tyrannical malevolence and a voice so deep it resonated as darkly as Leonard Cohen’s.

And he’s had prior success creating outlandish villains on Broadway with the Grinch and, from “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” Norman Osborn/Green Goblin.But Shakespeare has long been a touchstone.

He’s dedicated himself to the work, as was evident in his triumphant turn in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2023 production of “King Lear” in Washington, D.C., directed by Simon Godwin.The producers of which had the good sense to stream worldwide for all of us outside the nation’s capital who wanted to experience the thunderclap of Page’s Lear.Godwin, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company and an associate director of the National Theatre in London, leaves little distance between Page and the audience in his staging of “All the Devils Are Here.” The direct-address simplicity of the production serves the fluidity of Page’s performance.

The actor transitions from talking about the characters to becoming them with just a shift in his posture and vocal tone.Proximity is the point....