Power Tools: The White Devil at Red Bull Theater

Near the end of John Webster’s The White Devil, Flaminio—who has recently murdered his brother—watches his mother’s grief transform into madness. Ophelia-like, she distributes imaginary herbs and flowers: rosemary, rue, hearts-ease. Taking Flaminio’s hand, she remarks first on its whiteness, and then, looking closer, on “how ’tis speckled.” “He’s handled a toad, sure,” she murmurs. In her distraction, she neither recognizes her surviving son nor interprets the spots on his hand as blood. When she wanders away, Flaminio marvels, “I have a strange thing in me to th’ which / I cannot give a name without it be / Compassion.” In Red Bull Theater’s production of The White Devil, the line is a moment of intense stillness: a pause in the crescendo of betrayal and violence that makes up the final act. Tommy Schrider’s Flaminio delivers it with a mixture of wonder and distrust. For this lifelong hustler, occasional pander, and two-time murderer, “compassion” is an unfamiliar feeling.

In a different kind of tragedy, Flaminio’s response to his mother’s mad scene might figure—or even prompt—the audience’s emotional response to the tragedy itself. Witnessing a moving spectacle, Flaminio roughly stands in for the offstage witnesses, who are treated to the broader spectacle of the play as a whole. Coming as it does near the play’s end, the moment all but primes us for some kind of final, emotional climax: a spectacle of suffering that rouses us to compassion, to wonder, to release. It’s a trick. Release never comes—not for us and…