DR FAUSTUS. To 26 February.
Liverpool
DR FAUSTUS
by Christopher Marlowe
Liverpool Playhouse To 26 February 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 25 Feb
Runs 1hr 40min No interval
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 February
A production with ideas, but rarely sounding the depths of Marlowe's play.Philip Wilson's production of two Coward one-acters at the Playhouse last Spring declared him a master with prose drama. His production of Marlowe's great verse play confirms that. Story, characterisation, thematic development are handled with spirit. But they remain entities separate from the play's language, which is never made to fuse and intensify the various elements.
As if to confirm this, Wilson has cast Nicholas Tennant as Faustus, the don who bargains his soul to the devil for 24 years' power. Tennant is a strong actor, but his manner, appearance and voice are all, in the best sense, prosaic. Any verbal flight is likely to be undermined by a questioning look, any thought expressed in sceptical tones.
The production's set in a huge university library, complete with librarian shushing the academics. Yet Marlowe placed Faustus in his study, suggesting a private obsession missed here. Later, shifting tables or placing a chair atop a table to create various lordly locations underplays the scope of Faustus' activities. The cruelty and anger in Faustus' practical jokes are muted.
He may, famously, waste his opportunities (a problem for the play; Faustus wants to know more than anyone else. But as Marlowe patently couldn't know more than actual scholarship had uncovered, he was stymied. Not good for the poet of ambition). There's still a fascination in seeing Tennant's unconscious reliance on Mephistopheles, and the growing sense Faustus is a hollow man, his ambition unmatched by consistency - a big ideas' man easily diverted into trivialities.
Jamie Bamber's Mephistopheles overdoes the rage at being deprived of salvation - though it makes Faustus' final despair, a conflagration caused by himself as ultimate denial of his potential and involving a carrying out of his spoken promise (I'll burn my books) more pointed.
And the production achieves a stage poetry in the famous thousand ships invocation to Helen, acme of earthly beauty. In the all-male cast her appearance becomes an abstraction, rather than a peepshow. Faustus, ceasing his restless demands for new experiences or agonisings with his conscience, ironically achieves depth in the one moment he's emotionally overwhelmed.
Mephistopheles: Jamie Bamber
Librarian/Cardinal of Lorraine/Horse-courser/Old Man/Covetousness/Sloth: Alan Barnes
Wagner/Alexander's Paramour/Duchess of Vanholt/Helen of Troy/Pride/Lechery: Michael Brown
Good Angel/Second Scholar/Friar/Envy: Samuel Collings
Valdes/Creature of Fire/Devil Wife/Lucifer/Pope Knight: Simon Harrison
Cornelius/Friar/Alexander the Great/Duke of Vanholt/Gluttony: Daniel Osgerby
Evil Angel/First Scholar/Friar/Emperor Charles V/Wrath: John Faustus: Nicholas Tennant
Director: Philip Wilson
Designer: Mike Britton
Lighting: Olivcer Fenwick
Sound: Jason Barnes
Voice/Dialect coach: Neil Swain
Fight director: Bret Young
2005-02-24 00:42:47