Silverstein, Shel - Variety (essay date 13 December 1989)
Variety (essay date 13 December 1989)
SOURCE: “A Review of Oh, Hell, written by Shel Silverstein and David Mamet.” Variety 337, no. 10 (13 December 1989): 89.
[In the following review of the theatrical double-bill Oh, Hell, the reviewer criticizes Silverstein's one-act play The Devil and Billy Markham as silly, tedious, underdeveloped, and juvenile.]
s Hell isn't much fun in Oh, Hell, the double bill that opens the Lincoln Center Theater's season at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater. David Mamet's contribution is intermittently amusing but below par for him, and the Shel Silverstein opus is silly and tedious.
The Silverstein piece, The Devil And Billy Markham, is a shaggy-dog narrative poem about a down-and-out Nashville songwriter who dices with the devil and outwits him. Steeped in scatology and bawdy hippie barroom humor, the 50-minute piece aims at Rabelaisian effects but mainly induces...
[The entire page is 415 words long]
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