Doctor Faustus

This play by Shakespeare’s contemporary Marlowe is potentially thrilling. Unlike all other tragedies, which deal “only” with the inevitability, suddenness or unfairness of death, this piece takes us to areas the human mind can only barely take on board – eternal torment and damnation. John Faustus is the most brilliant scholar in Wittenberg. We first meet him in his study, bored with all the other disciplines the world offers the studious – law, medicine, divinity and others. He is inexorably drawn to necromancy, the black arts, or devil worship. With the aid of a black magic tome he conjures up Mephistopheles, Lucifer’s second-in-command in hell, and enters into one of the most notorious bargains in literature. He signs his soul over to the Devil, that is, agrees to perpetual damnation, in return for just twenty-four years of anything he wants. Think about it. ANYTHING. Ever wanted to be invisible? You got it. Travel anywhere you like? Sure. Meet your heroes? No problem. And here’s the clincher - sex with ANYONE you want? Really. Anyone! The trade off is that after twenty-four years you die and go to hell. Think of the most painful thing you could have done to you. Now, imagine it happening continuously. You don’t get used to it. The pain is as excruciating as it was the first time. And it happens forever. Forever. The human mind cannot grasp forever.So, Faustus’s journey through his twenty four years of pleasure, and the doubts and worries that beset him as he nears the fatal midnight stroke should be riveting and seriously make one think about life, death and the universe. Unfortunatley this production by ADC is so portentous and ponderous it felt more like purgatory then anything else.The design is quite stylish, and the actor playing Faustus has his moments. The rest of the ensemble plays various parts, devils, angles, and potentates to varying degrees of success. The famous scene where the seven deadly sins come to life is well choreographed. But the whole thing is so damn slow. The device of soliloquy is employed by writers so that the character thinks aloud. We do not pause when we think. Also, this play is written in the same iambic pentameter employed by Shakespeare. It has a rhythm and structure which you break at your peril. Here the lines are mostly rendered as prose, and the text has been poorly cut. The actor playing Mephistopheles is the slowest and most ponderous, using a strange, sonorous “actory” voice, which I assume he thought gave him gravitas. The whole thing is poorly lit. Atmosphere is one thing, but if you can’t see the actors’ eyes you could lose everything. We don’t quite, but that is a tribute to Marlowe’s magical lines, which sometimes clatter through with their full dramatic weight in spite of this production.I also feel there’s a basic misunderstanding about what the play is about. Faustus struggles with the two sides of his personality. If Mephistopheles physically manipulates BOTH the actors playing the good and bad angels then what are you saying? That there is no good angel? The whole point of this magnificent play is that we are all John Faustus. We all have decisions to make. We are all good and evil. This production suggested there is no good angel.God help us.