Review: "In the Devil's Hands" Asks Whether No Man Is an Island
In the Devil's Hands Written and directed by Helen Banner Original Music by Joshua Dumas Presented by A/Park Productions at Zoopraxic 11-51 44th Rd, Long Island City, Queens, NYC May 20-June 14, 2026 Rory Greenwood and Umer Khan. Photo by Diego Quintanar. There is something undeniably attractive about the idea of removing oneself from society to live in independent solitude, and, unlike the protagonist of new play In the Devil's Hands , most of us don't even have as compelling a motivation for such fantasizing as being suspected of murder. In the Devil's Hands , by Helen Banner, Creative Director of Zoopraxic, a new arts space in Long Island City, takes inspiration from the story of Alphonse Le Gastelois (1914-2012), a resident of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands and a British Crown Dependency. In 1961, Le Gastelois exiled himself to an island in the Écréhous reef, six miles from Jersey, after having been targeted as a suspect in a series of sexual assaults ...