Theatre Review: Doctors Faustus
Doctor Faustus
20/2/24 Byre Theatre, St Andrews
Directed by Dylan Swain
Produced by Piper Richardson
Written by Christopher Marlowe
Review by Noor Zohdy
An otherworldly terror met with striking immediacy and realism, the Mermaids Production of Doctor Faustus was chillingly visionary. The entire atmosphere, from the lights, to the music, to the eerie choir’s enchanting chorus as Faustus meets his fate, to the actors themselves, and the script that comes vividly to life ─ the play is a breath-taking experience from start to finish.
The chorus, eerie, haunting, ever-near creates a claustrophobic force; it rushes the play through to its tragic end whilst holding it suspended, and with each pause invests it with greater enigmatic force. Their chants and skirting shadowy figures infuse the play with its dark magic, and the performance of the Seven Deadly Sins is one of the play’s most powerful moments: Pride (Amelia Stokeld), Greed (Daisy Lillingston-Paterson), Wrath (Matt McCaffrey), Envy (Fiona Lock), Lust (Lila Patterson), Gluttony (Felix Da Silva Clamp), and Sloth (Ellen Rowlett) come together in spell-binding performance. Each of the vices as they represent them seem to overpower the very characters, enhancing the sense of extremity, passion, and overwhelming impossibility with which the play abounds. At once moving in unison and each chillingly individual, they come together to strike and entrance the audience with the very fervour Faustus (Lexie Dykes) himself experiences.
Mephistopheles (Callum Wardman-Browne) balanced personality with the unmistakable darkness and power, which is key to pushing the play past a simple sense of good and evil. Every phrase and gesture seemed irrefutably his own, and his dialogues with Faustus enabled the play’s nearly hypnotic realism. Wagner (Freddie Lawson) was instrumental to the play’s sense of humanity and depth. This keen depth and psychological complexity was brilliantly furthered by the magnetic dynamic of the Good (Margot Pue) and Evil Angels (Catriona Kadirkamanathan).
The success of Lucifer (Laura Bennie) is almost difficult to describe. The cavaliere, brusque power in her very movements created a figure at once entrancing and harrowing. The slowness, poise, and calm of Lucifer throughout makes the rushed, maddened desperation of Faustus towards the end all the more striking. The performance of Faustus was stunningly uncanny. The very words were infused with meaning that made the performance seem incredibly alive, charged, true, and immediate, impressively exceeding the danger of a static sense of script. How Faustus speaks of Heaven and Hell is central here; in the repetitions of these two words throughout, Lexie Dykes is able to realise the complexities of Faustus’ mind, from feverish discontent, fraught uncertainty, to utter, desperate despair. The balance of control in Faustus’ presentation, echoing his own keen self-consciousness is magnificently displaced by his split consciousness that comes to overwhelm him in perhaps the play’s most notable moment ─ Faustus’ final speech: ‘it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air’. The force of mortal tragedy and desperately acute powerlessness extended far beyond the stage.
Perhaps the play can best be described in its closing scene. The chorus of devils enters with Lucifer uttering their thunderous chant, ‘cut is the branch that might have grown full straight’. Each holds open one of Faustus’ formerly prised volumes; Lucifer holds the text on the very edge of his hand, but it is not until the very last phrase, ‘more than heavenly power permits’, that the books shut, silence falls, and the bright lights vanish in complete darkness. Here, as throughout, by the presence and force of the actors, we are held by the edge of each moment that we, like Faustus, are lost within, an enigma of reality, with the dream of ‘perpetual day’ struck down by a reality all too vivid and inescapable.
