Cairns plays ‘dice with devil’

DIRECTOR Jenine Collocott and actor James Cairns make a helluva meal out of The Devil and Billy Markham, an epic poem in iambic pentameter by the late Shel Silverstein.

Playboy magazine first published the lusty, gutsy poem in 1979 and it tells the tale of natural born gambling man Billy Markham who likes to play the blues – and dice with the devil.

The Devil and Billy Markham has won a 2017 Ovation award already (and please be aware it has a 16 and older audience rating).

Silverstein’s verse is amazingly descriptive and it must have been an immense task to learn those lines, especially as this is a one-hander where Cairns has to play Billy, the Devil, God, the narrator – and more with a deep south American accent.

The story also has more down-and-dirty twists than the devil’s tail itself and although the plot heads in unexpected directions, I can tell you that it travels to hell and back, via heaven and earth, in the space of just over an hour.

Lighting and music help, and the song choices flagging scene changes are bluesy and apt – with Highway to Hell and Stairway to Heaven among them. The moral of the story is don’t gamble with your soul unless you are happy to dance with the devil.

But hell will freeze over before our boy Billy says no to a game of dice – even if they are loaded against him.

However, as the poem goes, when a VW collides with a Mack Truck there can only be one winner . . .

The Contagious production team also were behind The Snow Goose ,a beautiful piece, and energetic Cairns is also starring in two other solo shows, both comedies.

I saw the one, the award-winning El Blanco by Gwydion Beynon when it premiered in Grahamstown two years ago. It is much lighter and funnier than The Devil and Billy Markham and I can heartily recommend it.

Judging by these, his third solo offering, James Cairns Against Humanity, may also be a winner.

I enjoyed The Devil and Billy Markham so much I googled the author’s name and learnt Silverstein was a cartoonist for Playboy who wrote the Johnny Cash Hit A Boy Named Sue as well as a slew of children’s books. Who knew? – Gillian McAinsh