Inspired by the classic comedies of the 17th and 18th centuries that he adapted, Ives writes the play "Don Juan in Chicago," where two stories are intermingled: that of the legendary Sevillian seducer Don Juan and the corresponding legend of Faust.
This work is a comedic satire filled with humor, spicy puns, and fast-paced farcical elements, full of scandals and written in a blend of prose and verse.
Ives' Faustian Don Juan is not an elderly man who has studied philosophy, medicine, law, and theology, like Goethe's hero who sells his soul to the Devil to relive his lost youth, nor is he a pleasure-seeking young man like Molière's hero, who charms, seduces, and entices women in order to satisfy his insatiable and vain masculine nature.
He is a handsome, wealthy, sexually inexperienced nobleman in 16th century Spain, who is more interested in finding the meaning of life through books and alchemy.
Fearing that he will not have time to find it, he summons the Devil and makes a deal with him that offers immortality—he will receive eternal youth in exchange for making love to a different woman every day, until midnight, and never with the same one a second time.
