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Review: Dr Faustus

Mephistopheles bounces on the heels of his All Stars, all impatient energy, and prowls over the top of the Ethical Philosophy section, crushing Locke and Williams underfoot. Be honest. You’ve always wanted to do it yourself. With all its thousands of yards of shelves of pomposity and expensive obscurity, the Norrington Room in Blackwells cries out to be used as a jungle gym, and the Creation Theatre company have finally brought every undergraduate’s daydream to life.

But when the novelty of the staging wears off – as it is bound to do at some point in the course of the three and a half hours of Dr Faustus – what is left? Behind the glaring smokescreen of sound and colour and light, what actual substance is there? Quite a lot, it turns out. This production is full of youthful exuberance, and a small cast of five brings off Marlowe’s sprawling and often scholastic script with jubilance and panache. On the whole.

By far the strongest aspect of this play is the company’s trademark physical theatre. Crashing, dashing and smashing books around like Greeks tossing plates at a wedding, Creation Theatre veer between sublime ensemble pieces and what can only be described as telekinetic ninja rape. At worst, it is comical, and at best it is jaw-dropping. Marlowe offset the high tragic seriousness of his main character’s descent into damnation with a great deal of clowning and son et lumiere to keep the cheap seats amused, and this cast do exultant justice to the scope for special effects.

The specially commissioned soundtrack mixes Trent Reznor-y industrial sludge with what sounds like the background music to Silent Witness. Add a fully destructible set, four banks of lighting and a series of gymnastic dance interludes, and you could be forgiven for thinking you were at a Nine Inch Nails gig. But Dr Faustus is no Avatar: the visual candy floss is complemented by some very credible acting. Gwynfor Jones steals the show as a Mephistopheles steeped in sarcasm and congenital arrogance, and he is backed by a versatile ensemble team playing everything from theological scholars to devils.

Yet now, Faustus, needst thou must be damned. All the company’s hard work is almost undone by Gus Gallagher’s unsympathetic Dr Faustus. Gallagher is not exactly hammy; ‘gammony’ might be a better way to put it. It is a performance full of saturated fat and unhealthy additives. He does not enter into the character’s rich intellectual angst, and so the dramatic axis of the play – the scholar’s compulsive hunger not just for real power, but for real recognition, the yearning to see learning and subtlety and flair translated into worldly happiness and satisfaction – comes across as a boring sub-plot. Gallagher simply doesn’t enjoy the script, playing Faustus as though he were Young Werther. It takes a lot to spoil a line like ‘Sweet Analytics, ‘tis thou has ravish’d me,’ but he manages it without even trying; and the final rhetorical climax of the play is without soul or heart. Nevertheless, he does not quite succeed in spoiling what is otherwise an engaging and worthwhile production.

 

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