Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, written way back in 1592, is the iconic Western story of the academic who sells his soul for knowledge and power, then experiences the ensuing bounties and regrets, as time runs out and his payment comes due. It’s a tale of power vs fear, aspiration vs limitation, human ego vs the divine order – and, more broadly, it’s an examination of decisions and their consequences.
Though Doctor Faustus is celebrated for Marlowe’s soaring poetry and the play’s thematic resonance, it is not performed often. How delightful, then, that two companies – Dandelion Theatre and Apothecary Theatre – have joined forces to mount a pre-Halloween production of the play at the Small World Music Centre production space.
When it first hit the stage, Doctor Faustus was a liminal story that bridged the distance between the allegorical Christian morality plays of the middle ages and the soaring and secular tragedies of the Elizabethan era.
We live today in an equally liminal time. Belief in both sides of the Faustian bargain – the Christian religion which monetizes the human soul, and the powerful knowledge bartered for it by Faustus – are equally contested and devalued.
In a post-truth universe, what we’re left with is our relationships, and these become the focus of this arresting adaptation by stars James Llewellyn Evans and Augusta “Gus” Monet aka Coyote Ugly. Marlowe’s script has been shorn of subplots and ancillary elements and re-shaped into a fraught, taut – and slyly humorous — single hour that centers the codependent relationship between tempter and tempted, enabler and addict.
Directed by Max Ackerman, this rocketing, rollicking ride actually starts before the show. When audience members enter the production space, Evans’ Faustus is already occupying the center of the room. Oblivious and wild-eyed, he is a hunched, slowly twisting shape lost in alternating bouts of intense contemplation and anguished realization. Because we have already seen a little of the process and price of his knowledge, the play can begin at the end, with Faustus staring down the impending expiry of his 24-year agreement to be served and enabled by Mephistopheles, servant of Lucifer.
His soul is now due. Tick tock.
With this urgency established, we return to the past to understand the intimate pas de deux that led Faustus here. Directed (I might say choreographed) by Max Ackerman, Doctor Faustus is the tale of two partners locked into a co-dependent dance. Evans’ Faustus is the more physically static partner, but he is blindingly intense: with piercing eyes and deep, expressive voice, he unfurls naked ambition and loud hubris that modulate seamlessly to childlike wonder. Most often found at his book-strewn desk on stage right, he ponders and he studies, alternating poetic musing, plaintive questioning, and regretful rationalization.
A stylish modern Satan, clad in suit, bolero hat, cane, lipstick and eye makeup, Monet is Mephistopheles, the servant of Lucifer who makes the deal for Faustus’ soul and then delivers the knowledge and power he craves. Mephistopheles is Faustus’ lanky, sinuous and omnipresent dance partner: circling him repeatedly . . . mounting and dismounting the stage, sinking for a time into a front-row seat while their verbal dance continues . . . but always springing back up to resume this orbit, which contains and focuses the pyrotechnics of the relationship.
At moments, a mask-abetted Monet becomes boss Lucifer, and even (with the aid of lighting and plastic sheets) other characters like Helen of Troy and Faustus’ good and bad angels Smiling, cajoling, hectoring, humouring and coercing, Monet’s athletic form and seductive words encircle Faustus ever more tightly. This dance of partner and prey culminates in an arresting final tableau, which refashions the loss of Faustus’ soul as the consummation of the relationship.
The production makes the absolute most of the Small World in which it is being mounted. The simple set features Faustus’ book-strewn desk and plastic diaphanous curtains at back that enable Monet’s quick changes, as well as various seductive wrappings and unwrappings. Use of red and blue lighting signals shifts in the infernal and divine energies, and popular music (such as an on-brand Ozzy Osbourne) adds thematic resonance while standing in for the passage of time. And on their way in to the show, audience members are offered a way to signal their willingness or reticence to interact with the performers. At a delicious juncture in the play, the willing will be . . . tempted . . . onto the stage to augment the two-person cast.
Mephistopheles tells Faustus “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place, for where we are is hell,/ And where hell is must we ever be.” In keeping with this infernal spirit, this small and mighty production of Doctor Faustus simply refuses its constraints. Marlowe’s play has been whetted into a sharp, tightly-choreographed relationship drama whose kinetic energy fills the space, cuts deeply into our imagination, and arcs out into the world beyond.
This is artistic overreaching: bold, pure and unapologetic. And the welcome consequence is not damnation – it’s deeply engrossing theatre.
Doctor Faustus runs until October 31, 2023. Click here to reserve tickets online.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesayarts Magazine, 2023
