Hugo Weaving, The White Devil, Angie Miliken, poster

n.  Hugo Weaving ~ The White Devil 

Written by John Webster
A Sydney Theatre Company/Olympic Arts Festival co-production
Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Brachiano ~brooding, lusty, dangerous thinker, debauchee, doomed lover
Cast: Hugo Weaving   Brachiano ,Angie Milliken   Vittoria ,  Jeremy Sims  Flamineo , Philip Quast   Francisco , John Gaden Monticelso , Jeanette Cronin/Heather Mitchell   Isabella, William Zappa   Ludovico, Bruce Spence  Camillo, Paula Arundell Zanche the Maid, Julia Blake,  Brian Green, Matthew Newton 
Dir: Gale Edwards      Set Design: Brian Thomson
Costume Design Roger Kirk   ComposersMax Lambert and Martin Armiger
Olympic Festival Theatrical run: August 18-September 13 2000 at the Theatre Royal, Sydney.

Hugo Weaving: The White Devil Plot/Comments:

Billed as 'Reservoir Dogs meets The Godfather meets Dynasty', Gale Edwards' stunning, epic dramatisation of John Webster's The WhiteDevil was (perhaps bizarrely) chosen as the 2000 Sydney Olympic Arts Festival theatre production
     Hugo Weaving was a lusty, swashbuckling, brooding Duke of Brachiano and Angie Milliken a sexy, sultry, proud Vittoria.
Packed with swordfights, gallons of blood, torchlight confrontation, sex, lust, sadism, religious and political scandal, a highly melodramatic plot, suicide pacts, strangulations and countless murders , The White Devil was staged as an 'event' and played to wildly receptive, packed audiences for its limited run.
    The White Devil is a study of hypocrisy and the corruption of power (political, religious, financial, sexual and emotional), and the punishment of women who dare to challenge a patriarchal society on their own turf. Click here for a simplified breakdown of the supremely operatic Jacobean plot, with photos.
Hugo Weaving, The White Devil, Angie Miliken, seduction

    Brachiano (Hugo Weaving) is a brooding, fiery, proud noble, ultimately doomed to pay the highest price for his overwhelming and passionate love for another man's wife.  Brachiano's love for Vittoria makes him vulnerable ~ physically and emotionally ~ and he is by turns tender, flirtatious and possessed by rageful jealousy. Although he has societal power as a man, it is Vittoria who has the ultimate power in the relationship: he is far more dependent on her for his own happiness.
       Vittoria is never presented as an innocent: she is involved (indirectly) with the deaths of her first husband and Brachiano's wife; she is tempestuous, calculating, aware of her power over the man who loves her and unafraid to use this to her advantage. However, society labels her as a whore, while the actions of the leading male figures of that society commit the same crimes (or worse), while retaining an undeniable belief in the correctness of their own actions.

Despite the terrible deeds performed in the name of their love (or lust), neither character can be seen as evil. This is in contrast to the scheming brothers Francisco and Monticeslo, who are cold in their 'revenge' and political need to save face; and Vittoria's own brother, Flamineo, who is motivated only by self-interest. Vittoria and Brachiano's actions are crimes born out of passion, of a relentless desire to be together ~ at any cost. Although they are deeply flawed characters, their doomed, overpowering love and realisation of their own flaws make each a true (anti) hero and heroine.

The White Devil Gallery
The White Devil Plot &  Notes
Next Release:  Lord of the Rings 
Next Project:   Matrix Reloaded 
Back: The Magic Pudding
Next Play: The Real Thing
Previous Play: The Alchemist
Web Weaving
 

Typical Hugo Weaving Quotes:

  • [on meeting Vittoria at Camillo's]:"Let me into your bosom, happy lady, pour out, instead of eloquence, my vows: loose me not, madam, for, if you forego me, I am lost eternally"
  • "I'll seat you above law, and above scandal…you shall to me at once be dukedom, health, wife, children, friends, and all"
  • [To Isabella]: "Because your brother is the corpulent Duke...I scorn him like a shaved Polack! All his reverend wit lies in his wardrobe...your brother, the great Duke first made this match...accuresed be the priest that sang the wedding mass, and even my issue! Your hand I'll kiss; this is the latest ceremony of my love. Henceforth I'll ne'er lie with thee: and this divorce shall be as truly kept as if the judge had doomed it. Fare you well: our sleeps are severed"
  •  [to Cardinal Monticeslo]: "cowardly dogs bark loudest: sirrah priest, I'll talk with you hereafter...the sword you frame of such an excellent temper I'll sheathe in your own bowels"
  • [to Vittoria] : " Thou hast lead me, like an heathen sacrfice, with music and with fatal yokes of flowers to my eternal ruin. Woman to man is either a god or a wolf"
  • "your art to save fails as oft as a great man's friends...how miserable a thing it is to die 'mongst women howling"


Comments and Queries:

  • Gale Edwards was at NIDA with Weaving (Philip Quast seems to have also been there with him) and also directed him in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Angie Miliken later worked opposite him in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. Bruce Spence has worked  on The Dirtwater Dynasty , Wendy Cracked a Walnut ,  Exileand Lord of the Rings:  Return of the King .  See The Usual Suspects for a huge list of recurring Weaving co-workers.
  • After the first week of previews, the entire cast and crew were asked to restage the production on Broadway. However, due to other work commitments, nearly an entirely new cast was used, with Marcus Graham taking the role of Brachiano. 
  • Very special thanks to Kate and Angela at the Philip Quast site Continuumfor the help with the programme scan and newspaper quotes
 

Edwards (who has directed Broadway, West End, RSC and Sydney opera productions) has known Hugo Weaving since their days in NIDA and also directed him in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. ''Gale's experience would help enormously," said Weaving, ''It's knowing what works as spectacle, knowing how the ride works, how the ride evolves.''
      Rather than try to stage the melodramatic plot in a naturalistic style, Edwards chose to amplify the action with a more operatic style: one reviewnoted that it was performed with "heightened speech and movements, much swirling of capes, striding of boots, posturing and evil glares across the stage". There were extravagant, sexy costumes (tight leather and silk, corsets, frock coats, big boots and massive displays of cleavage); dark reflective sets with massive and imposing columns, hanging bridges, huge photographic portraits and forbidding cages flying in to the "pounding heartbeats" of the "nerve-shattering" score.
Hugo Weaving, The White Devil, Angie Miliken, dukedom...everything
Hugo Weaving, The White Devil, the murder of brachiano The staging of the gruesome and horrific strangulation of Brachiano (Hugo Weaving) was praised by critics for its ability to shock audiences.

"The White Devil 
is a stunner - not only in terms of its fierce attack, 
but in the telling details 
Edward's weaves in."
~ Bryce Hallet, Sydney Morning Herald, Monday 21 August 2000
 
 

Hugo Weaving content: 

After an unusual four year break from the theatre (last seen with Geoffrey Rush in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist ), Hugo Weaving returned to the stage with a swaggering, dark, lusty Jacobean anti-hero.

Although Brachiano arranges the initial murders (even watching one of them), the part is varied enough for a skilled actor to make the audience want him to succeed: they are complicit in the pair's guilt and drive to be together. 
     As Weaving said: ''he's a bit of a hero-villain. He's presented as the lover, then moves into very different territory ~ you see him with his wife being quite brutal.Webster tends to present characters in a very uncompromising way: you don't get all the edges ironed out. One character is in many things, all the different facets of their personality are in different scenes. I think it's quite a challenge to make it a homogenous character but, at the same time, not iron out all those differences.''
Hugo Weaving, The White Devil, Angie Miliken: if you forego me, I am lost eternally

"Hugo Weaving is tremendously sexy and sly as Brachiano, 
all hips and lips in black leather and ruffled white cotton and his impassioned (and so very bloody) death has hearts racing" 
Review found here

"In a welcome return to the stage, Weaving is in great form, intensely alive and peculiarly swarthy, brash and aloof "
~ Bryce Hallet: Sydney Morning Herald, Monday 21 August 2000

n. Performed right after main filming on The Lord of the Rings (and before going to the US for work on The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions), Peter Jackson and writer Philippa Boyens noted how Weaving was "really sick" on his final day of shooting before flying back for previews of The White Devil . 
On the last of the previews, a possibly flu-ridden, overworked and overstrangled Hugo Weaving then collapsed/had a fit/was suffocated on stage. See here for press reports and here for an interview where Hugo talks about his experience of temporary death.