Theatre in Review: Doctor Faustus (Classic Stage Company)

	Chris Noth. Photo: Joan Marcus

In Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe condemned his title character to hell. In Andrei Belgrader's production, Faustus is sent to Hellzapoppin'. Indeed, so much is going on, and so little of it has anything to do with anything, that Marlowe's famed, but little seen, tragedy has been converted into something like a campus variety show. There are long comic sequences that feature plenty of dialogue not found in the script. (The play has been heavily reworked by Belgrader and David Bridel; you can bet the ranch that, in the original, Faustus doesn't say "Que sera sera, whatever will be will be" and that no one comments, "Misery loves company.") Various characters roam through the audience, stepping over five or six patrons until a victim is found in the middle of a row. The devils Baliol and Belcher show in red pajamas, complete with hoods, horns, and tails. One of the clowns has appropriated the name Dick, so he can say lines like, "I shall be the devil's Dick." There's a ukulele singalong, and later, Helen of Troy pops out of her dress to prowl the stage dressed only in high heels and a handful of glitter.

True, there's a reason Doctor Faustus isn't staged more often. By modern standards, it's a mess, a hodgepodge of tones and styles in which the terror of eternal damnation jostles with knockabout, and direly unfunny, comedy routines. There is a legion of supporting characters, most of whom appear briefly before disappearing forever. Some of the most famous sequences, such as the presentation of the Seven Deadly Sins, seem to come from some long-forgotten court masque, not a cohesive dramatic work. It's a brutal challenge for a director to impose a unifying vision on this near-chaos.

In any case, Belgrader doesn't even try. If anything, he pulls the text further apart, filling scene after scene with gimmicks that routinely break the fourth wall. (If, like me, you feel that the two most dreadful words in the English language are "audience participation," you'd better give CSC a wide berth for the next few weeks.) The clowns are in charge, executing lengthy comedy sequences that riff off of the original script while adding plenty of supposedly humorous anachronisms. In all honesty, many of these seemed to work for much of the audience at my performance. Still, questions persist: Why do the voices of the good and evil angels who haunt Faustus sound like cartoon characters. Why does Carmen M. Herlihy, as one of Faustus' colleagues, growl her lines like Mercedes McCambridge in The Exorcist? Why does Chris Noth's Faustus seem like he is making a special guest appearance in somebody else's play?

The answer to the last question, I believe, is that Belgrader isn't really interested in matters of theology and the soul, as expressed in Elizabethan terms. Noth is a technically skilled actor, but he doesn't really have a role to play. Faustus comes and goes, giving us little updates on his progress toward the pit of Hades, but there is little of the dramatic vigor that Marlowe showed in other plays. The actor seems uncomfortable much of the time, and for good reason: the staging of his scenes is notably slack, compared to all the energy spent on the ramblings of the clowns Robin and Dick.

This Doctor Faustus is never really dull. Some of the fooling around amuses, and certain surprises -- most notably, the conjuring of Lust in the Seven Deadly Sins scene -- are the products of real directorial invention. Zach Grenier's Mephistopheles, in the garb of a holy monk, is a creature of slashing irony, adding many undertones of meaning to every line; the production perks up whenever he appears. Lucas Caleb Rooney works hard as Robin and is also effective in a number of roles, as is Geoffrey Owens, especially as a pope who is the butt of practical jokes by an invisible Faustus. There's a nifty bit of staging in which Faustus cuts open his arm to produce enough blood to sign his contract with Lucifer -- blood which vanishes a second later. There's also a lovely moment when the galaxy of tiny planets dangling over the stage is illuminated, to magical effect.

But, for whatever reason, Belgrader is far more interested in the comic interludes and any attempt at finding drama in the death of Faustus' soul falls flat. The initial appearance of Mephistopheles, headless and dressed in a tunic covered with human skulls, might be more effective if staged differently; here, it looks like a bad Halloween costume. There's very little sense of time running out on Faustus as the end of his life draws near. And when he finally enters into the gaping mouth of hell, the preponderance of fog and colored lights makes it look like the entry to a downmarket disco, circa 1975.

The production design has its moments. Tony Straiges' set frames the action in a false proscenium covered with images of the Zodiac, and he provides a witty toy Vatican for Faustus' scene with the pope. Much of Jason Lyons' lighting, including a kind of forest-of-beams effect and some sinister uplighting cues, works very well. Rita Ryack and Martin Schnellinger's costumes have many ingenious touches, including a prelate's robes, which unfurl when he is standing on a tower, rolling all the way down to the deck. Fabian Obispo's sound design includes some unsettling whispery voices, representative of the promptings of Faustus' conscience.

But this Doctor Faustus is mostly notable for seizing on the script's weaknesses and doubling down on them. It's not so much that Marlowe's vision has been betrayed; it's that nobody involved seems to have had any vision at all. -- David Barbour