Patrick Page has spent decades making audiences fall in love with hating him, starring as Hades in Hadestown and terrorizing Broadway stages as Scar and the Green Goblin along the way. Now the actor is bringing his solo deep-dive into Shakespeare's most compelling bad guys to Boston, with a five-night run of All the Devils Are Here at the Emerson Paramount Center running Wednesday, October 28, through Sunday, November 1.
The show, created and performed by Page and directed by Simon Godwin, explores Shakespeare's villains. As reported by The Boston Globe, Page built the piece around the idea that modern audiences expect villains to have meaningful motivations and believable backstories, a demand he argues Shakespeare was the first to truly satisfy. Tickets for the Robert J. Orchard Stage engagement, located at the Emerson Paramount Center at 559 Washington Street, start at $27.50.
What began as a pandemic-era experiment has since become one of the more decorated solo shows in recent memory. The production first streamed digitally through Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Company in 2021 before making its live Off-Broadway debut in October 2023 in New York, according to a Facebook post from ArtsEmerson. That run went on to win the 2024 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Solo Performance, with additional nominations for the Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Awards, per Arts News Now.
A Rogues' Gallery in 85 Minutes
Across its 85-minute runtime, Page moves through monologues and scenes from more than a dozen Shakespeare characters, as New York Theatre Guide has detailed, ranging from the comic scheming of Malvolio in Twelfth Night to tragic figures like Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and Claudius in Hamlet. Other characters featured include Iago and Lady Macbeth.
From Hadestown's Hades to Shakespeare's Stage
Page's credentials for this kind of survey are hard to dispute. Playbill has dubbed him “The Villain of Broadway” for a résumé that includes starring as Hades in Hadestown along with turns as Scar in The Lion King, the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, as TheaterMania has noted. He has also branched into screen work, playing recurring character Richard Clay on HBO's The Gilded Age and earning a Snow White film credit.
Director Simon Godwin, who steered the project through both its digital origins and its live staging, favors a minimalist, direct-address approach that keeps Page close to the audience throughout. The staging lets Page glide between literary commentary and character transformations using subtle shifts in voice and physicality. The design team behind that intimacy includes scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado, costume designer Emily Rebholz, lighting designer Stacey Derosier, and sound designer Darron L West, under producer Octopus Theatricals and executive producer Mara Isaacs, per the show's official website.
Talkbacks and Accessible Performances in Boston
Each of the five Boston performances will be followed by a 20- to 30-minute moderated conversation featuring Page's personal anecdotes and audience Q&A, according to ArtsEmerson. Patrons seeking accessible performances have two options during the run: an Open Captioned show on Saturday, October 31, and an American Sign Language interpreted performance on Sunday, November 1, according to ArtsEmerson.
Boston's stop is one piece of a tour that has carried the show well beyond its Off-Broadway home. The national run launched at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in October 2024, and an August 19–30, 2026, engagement had been scheduled at Princeton's McCarter Theatre Center.
