Since Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is the greatest play ever written in the history of the world (those who disagree can go to the devil), it’s remarkable how rarely it’s done by major theaters.
Now there’s a Globe Theatre production directed by Matthew Dunster, starring Paul Hilton in the title role and Arthur Darvill as Mephistopheles. I’m unlikely to be able to fly to London to see it, even though it’s running until Oct. 2. I’ll have to subsist on the photos and reviews.
The Independent on Sunday calls the show “fine, lucid”. Charles Spencer of The Telegraph is unimpressed: “This is a Faustus that often looks impressive, with its sinister choreography and grotesque designs, but when it comes to genuine chills and thrills, the audience is left seriously short-changed. “ Theorizes the equally unthrilled Brian Logan in The Guardian, “the problem is partly that we don’t believe in hell any more. So it’s easy to relate to Faustus’s initial scorn of the concept, and hard to credit his deathbed fear.” London Magazine’s Edward Lukes gets credit for leading off his review with the important observation that here’s the Globe, bastion of the Bard of Avon, finding room for his main rival. But then Lukes fall into the same theological and moral ruminations as nearly all the other critics do.
I read half a dozen reviews of the show before I gained any inkling that Dunster’s production might have some humor in it. Marlowe’s script certainly does, and the interlude of magic tricks which illustrate the protagonist’s initial delight at having traded his soul to Satan was built upon by producers over the centuries until The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus was a comedy treat rivaling only that other dizzy death-dealer, Mr. Punch.
So I really want to believe this review by Neil Norman in the The Express—not London’s most trusted and exalted newspaper, perhaps, but one which appreciates Doctor Faustus the way I always have. “Filled with magic tricks, diabolical conjurations and ribald jiggerypokery,” Norman writes, “Christopher Marlowe’s play is a far cry from po-faced theological dispute.”
The other critics have obviously got Goethe on the brain. Lighten up.