CIA agents, dancing Popes and a eyebrow-raisingly attired emissary of the devil all feature in a modern reimagining of Christopher Marlowe’s tale of one man’s damnation.
For this co-production between West Yorkshire Playhouse and Citizens’ Theatres, Marlowe’s play has had two of its middle Acts excised, the authorship of which is contested, and new material created to take their place by the playwright Colin Teevan. His additional scenes are contemporary in tone and language, satirical in intent, albeit in a way that’s rather blunt. This all makes for a fascinating, if slightly uneven experiment, one that translates the macabre imagery of Marlowe into a recognisable if heightened modern world of corrupt bankers, a (recently retired) comedy Pope and a media mogul with an uncanny vocal resemblance to Rupert Murdoch.
When Faustus dabbles in the black arts, he summons up Mephistopheles, a representative of Lucifer, who claims his soul in return for 24 years of unadulterated pleasure and power – and, in this case, celebrity. Teevan’s Faustus becomes a famous magician, travelling the world and performing for Presidents, while his Mephistopheles is corset-clad and flame-haired presence, a creature both feminine and beyond gender. As Faustus gradually becomes more and more jaded and simultaneously tempted by the love of his stage manager Grace Wagner, Mephistopheles grows uneasy and perhaps even jealous.
Dominic Hill’s staging is as audacious as Teevan’s rewriting if the play. The performers form a chorus, seated behind their dressing room mirrors and changing costumes in front of the audience as they switch from character to character. While Hill injects an energy and breathless pace into the set-pieces, parts of the first half do tend to drag. Kevin Trainor is a pleasingly geeky figure as Faustus, but while Siobhan Redmond has undeniable presence and charisma as Mephistopheles, she recites her lines in a curious, otherworldly delivery which while understandable as a stylistic choice, comes to prove distracting.
The production’s finest moment is the masque of the Seven Deadly Sins, a memorable sequence which recalls the work of David Lynch in its imagery and its mastery of the grotesque. Gary Lilburn’s portrayal of Lucifer may have a touch of the vaudeville to it, but he’s still a chilling and unsettling presence. Moments like this and Faustus’ climatic decline are juxtaposed with some broad and bawdy humour, which only adds to the production’s tonal uneveness.
There is much to enjoy here: the new scenes, set in a seedy backstage world, jab at celebrity culture and include some topical references. If one or two of the jokes feel shoe-horned in that seems only in keeping with the origins of these scenes. Other moments miss their mark and there’s a nagging feeling that Faustus’ journey should be a lot more chilling than it is here, a lot more – well – hellish
Read Hannah Silva’s interview with Colin Teevan about his version of Doctor Faustus.
