The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

What was billed as the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus turned out to be the Comical History; whether for better or for worse, it is hard to say. I am tempted to say for the worse.

The play offers a plethora of variations, added to by hack writers for more than half a century. Presented with a wide choice of scenes--farcical and tragic, relevant and irrelevant--a director must choose among them to carry through single theme. Word Baker, who is directing the Boston University production, uses everything and the result is rather disunified to say the least.

I have nothing against the use of comedy in Faustus; for all I know, many of the comic scenes were written by Marlowe himself. But, they could be used discriminately so as to bear some relation to the dramatic undercurrent, which is, for whatever else one may add, a theme of sin, torture, and hell, coupled with the secular joys which lie along the path to hell.

It is in Faustus that this joy and pain, this exaltation and fear of retribution, must be combined to form a character difficult if not impossible to portray on stage. James Straley does it well although he does not achieve the full childish joy Faustus finds in his power nor the full voluptuousness in his passions.

Denni Allen makes a delightful Mephistopheles, somewhat coy and aloof, domineering, and beautifully expansive in his moment, ever tempting Faustus to greater sin. He suffers, however, from a fault which seemed to impede nearly everyone in the cast: an inability to lend sufficient grandeur to his speech. However regal his actions, his voice almost always gives him away.

If the drama was drowned by the farce, what turned out was, still, highly entertaining and colorful. The stage was fully used for magnificent and flourishing movement while the costumes and set added a fine array of color. Carol Lee Dixon's setting in the style of Mies van der Rohe offered tremendous variety in its simple starkness. Quite frank and open, it consisted simply of a scaffold structure with spotlights and a variety of drapery appended. The lighting, by Allen Klein, was certainly dramatic enough but often failed to adequately illuminate the actors. Harriet Kaufman Levi's costumes, however, are without blemish. Their abstract simplicity and color make up for almost any fault in the production.

Though Baker's staging was generally excellent, it was often maudlin in its excesses. Thunder and gales at every mention of the Devil and at every calumniation of religion seems unnecessary. But they were particularly poor when sung by chorus line behind the scenes. Once the chorus showed up on stage (now as corps de ballet) it proved more effective. The girls writhed and groaned about the feet of Lucifer, Belzebub, and Mephistopheles, rendering a vivid picture of Hell.

This is important because the play relies heavily on making damnation as much a reality to the twentieth century audience as it was (without exaggerated staging) to that of the sixteenth. In this Baker was successful and he came closer to achieving a sense of the spectacular in the knowledge and wonders displayed by Faustus and Mephistopheles.

Comical or Tragical, it was an entertaining play and I can recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind his theater somewhat muddled.