Word: script
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Even without the Harvard jokes, the script is funny--kitschy, but funny. The play is described in the program as "a late-20th-century response to the Elizabethan masterpiece," Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. The plot has no surprises: a previously upstanding citizen and scholar sells his soul to the devil in exchange for having his innermost wishes fulfilled and must eventually pay the price for his folly...
...Strutting across the stage with an obnoxious yellow suit and a mouth you wouldn't want to take home to Mother, Murray, "a demon with heart palpitations," is cheesiness at its best. LeBow manages to perfectly capture the air and nature of the typical Kutscher's comic. Brustein's script walks an extremely fine line between the deliciously kitchy and the horribly cliched, resting precariously in the hands of its cast, and requiring a very delicate touch. Where LeBow triumphs, others don't fare quite as well...
Demons is not for the faint of heart. Utterly un-PC, and often grating, it makes fun of everyone from devout Christians to budding feminists. While the script is at times offensive and the acting inconsistant, the play is visually stunning, and, for that reason alone may be worth a short two hour venture into Brustein's own Hell...
Perhaps his sweet tooth does not extend to the syrupy script. Writer and director Leven, a psychotherapist who spent time on the Harvard faculty, was not expecting this acting trinity to descend upon his humble screenplay and is simply unprepared to handle such an awesome burden on his first stint as a director...
Although the "savage in a strange land" scenario is a little old, the corresponding environmental messages is not too overstated. "Maybe I'm just old fashioned," says Paul Bunyan bitterly, "but in my day we didn't kill the land; we just borrowed from it." More than the script, director Jeremiah Chechik relies on the gorgeous scenery of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and California. These make a powerful silent plea for environmental conservation...