The Devil Went Down to Chelsea to See ‘Prudencia Hart’
Ben BrantleyDecember 13, 2016: In search of merry and bright drinking companions in this dark and sullen winter? You could do a lot worse than raise a shot glass (or two or three) with the rousing band of Scots who’ve encamped in a pub at the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea. They sing, dance on tables, discuss post-post-structuralist theory, talk in rhyme. And they tell one hell of a tale. Which happens to be about going straight to hell. O.K., maybe “straight” isn’t quite the word for a narrative as twisty as a back road in the hills of the Scottish Borders region, where “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart” is set. But this gleeful import from the National Theater of Scotland, which opened on Tuesday night, does transport you into infernal eternity. It turns out to be a swell place for a hibernal vacation.
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