DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Duke Of York's Theatre, London WC2
Opened 22 April, 2016
**

The opening and closing phases of Christopher Marlowe’s play can stand proudly beside any other Elizabethan or Jacobean drama... handily, given that this revival opened on the eve of the big Shakespeare quatercentenary celebrations. But it doesn’t half sag in the middle, even if (as is increasingly the case) the comic subplot is binned. Partly, of course, this is the point: having taken the cataclysmic step of selling his soul to the devil, Faustus then does nothing with his 24 years of supreme power before the deal is called in but play silly practical jokes and fart around for momentary gratification. The thing is, it doesn’t make for engrossing theatre either.

Jamie Lloyd’s revival sets out to rectify this by replacing that section in its entirety. Once Faustus seals his infernal pact with Lucifer’s lieutenant Mephistopheles, it’s off to Vegas as the world’s most famous and successful magician. This meshes with Lloyd’s contemporary setting: we first see Faustus in a suburban villa, and the demons that attend him partake of the grubby imagery of modern everyday horror, slouching around in stained, off-white underwear and supplying the damned scholar not with a collection of grimoires but with a magically endowed copy of Hello! magazine. The sexual tension is increased by making both Mephistopheles and Faustus’ servant Wagner female, and introducing a current of potential redemption through love suggestive of Goethe’s version of the tale.

And you know what? It works even less well than all the flippant faff in the original version. Colin Teevan’s additional material is the clumsiest stuff I’ve ever seen from this usually fine writer. Kit Harington is on record as relishing the change from playing Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones to portraying Faustus, but his collaboration in this project may rather suggest that, as Snow’s screen lover repeatedly put it, he knaws noothin’. Jenna Russell’s Mephistopheles and even Forbes Masson as Lucifer himself (sorely underused here) exude neither seductive temptation, hellish authority nor brooding menace. Jade Anouka is short-changed by making Wagner a mere plot device. September will see the London transfer of the RSC’s current Stratford production of Faustus, compared to which, why, this is hell, and I’m well out of it.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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