Dr Faustus (RSC)

A couple of years ago, the RSC Summer started in January with The Taming of the Shrew, so it seems they are gradually learning from experience.

I'm afraid I was bored by this

The problem is is that this is the first time I saw the play performed, with only a general knowledge of the story

This is not the perfect production for newcomers. Heavily cut to make a 1 hour and 45 minute show with no interval (which I felt tick by), with lots of filler and choreographed moments sprinkled in.

Watch out Barbican and be amazed at watching Faustus do some tidying up and draw the magic circle for 5 minutes max

Never really felt Faustus 24 year magical mastery pass by, some of the costumes were confusing (the Devils minions dressed up as Jews?), and the whole Faustus/Mephistopheles being one went over my head. Maybe I'll get it if I saw the two swap roles, but I am not prepared to see the show multiple times before I get to see that

The funny thing is is that (despite divided opinion) Maria abergs bizarre King John was a great introduction to the play for me. With White Devil and this, she's going way over head with her gimmicks and directorial decisions that I'm just left out in the cold. Whatever masterful writing is in Marlowes piece was lost to me, and I was unengaged

enjoyed the music, and enjoyed Sandy Grierson as Faustus, picking through the different books of study before picking magic at the start

I am going to watch the globe recording before I even set foot in the Duke of Yorks for the Jamie Lloyd production

Bumping this as it is now at the Barbican for those too lazy to drag their bottoms to Stratford Upon Avon.

I had no idea what was happening and with the exception of the two leads (We got Grierson as Faustus and Ryan as Mephistopheles) and Eleanor Wyld's turn as Lucifer it just felt like an amateur production, not purely because of performances (though the Seven Deadly Sins scene is even worse than Exposure the Musical's) but because the whole thing felt like it had been conceived at the last minute.

Maybe it was a rusty return after a while but as this was my first Faustus it was completely perplexing. Once Faustus makes his deal with the devil I had no idea what was happening!

Agreed. A play with a good beginning and a crackin ending. No middle. I wonder what they actually did when it was first performed? Maybe audience participation.

Sorry I mean amateur is terms of skill and experience, perhaps there was a better word but it seemed right when describing a production that had little professional aspect to it. It was hammy and looked cheap on the large Barbican stage . I have seen amateur productions which are far better than a lot of professional productions but I did find myself doubting if many of the professional actors in this production ensemble had ever been in any professional roles before but it felt unfocused and run by people who don't know why are doing (which in most amateur fields is the case)

As an amateur blogger I know it doesn't mean lack of skill, just lack of experience/interest to be paid for it

Ha! School is much better, thanks Jan. In hindsight I think too much time was given to the two main leads from the director that the ensemble were allowed to run riot.

Yeah. Leads were pretty good except I kept thinking it would have been better if they'd played the opposite parts following the match business. You are right, the entrance of Mephistopheles was a big disappointment, he could at least have come up on a lift from the centre of the stage or something. I paid £10 for a top price centre stalls seat on a day ticket, so even more of a steal I guess.

I saw Oliver Ryan as Faustus when I was at the RSC. Considering I really didn't like Maria Aberg's White Devil, I liked her production of this play. It's a flawed work but I thought she did a good job on it.

They are far from equal parts are they. Can't recall how it worked - did the one who let the match burn for longest get the shorter part ?

30+ years ago I saw the last RSC production of this in the Swan. Gerard Murphy as Faust, Richard McCabe as a more distinctive Wagner, and David Bradley excellent as Mephistopheles, at the end a giant pit opened up in the stage with lots of fire and pyrotechnics.

I saw Ryan as Faustus.

From my one-time anecdotal observation of the match lighting, which supposedly beckons blind fate to choose the winner (the longer burning match plays the bigger and better part of Faustus), this is a competition that Grierson is better at. Grierson held his match almost horizontally, and it burned weakly, exceedingly slowly, whereas Ryan held his match at 45 degrees, and it burned so fast and so furiously that an enormous flame almost scorched his fingers. It was an unexpected twist that Grierson infinitesimally overplayed his strategy of maintaining a slow burn rate, when his feeble flame unexpectedly burned itself out half way down his stick, less than a second before his inevitable victory.

This resulted in a typecasting that worked well for the play. Ryan's lived-in face suggests the weatherbeaten look of a man who plunges headfirst and hungrily forward, like his match flame and Faustus himself, and gets repeatedly beaten about the face by life's punches. By contrast, the taller graceful Grierson's unspoiled smooth facial features have the silky sophistication of a Bond villain who has found a way to sneakily slide through life, placing his vicissitudes squarely on the shoulders of others.

Ryan's recklessness in his match-burning strategy appeared to inform his subsequent performance, which was one of unabashed abandon. Ryan's Faustus is like a rollicking rollercoaster, without a landing platform, wherein even his vacillations about his deal with Mephistophilis appear as the doomed highs of the rollercoaster car before the inevitable dips ahead. Not once do we really doubt that Ryan's hunger for experience will ebb sufficiently to give him genuine pause in his riotous plunge to doom.

Personally, I found Kit Harrington's suicidally static Faustus far more intrinsically interesting than Ryan's blazing bullet of a man, but there is no doubt that this production is the more viscerally exciting of the two, and that is down to Ryan's unstoppable momentum.

There is one moment, involving his encounter with Jade Croot's virginally youthful and desperately innocent Helen of Troy, that smacks the audience in the face with the sheer eerie horror of what a hungry careening unconsidered life can mean when it collides with the life and experience of another person. Shocking, meaningful and memorable.

All the while, Grierson's smarmy sly brilliant Mephistophilis slimes and oozes his way through oiling the tracks, of Faustus' headlong plunge into hell, with easy grace and the slightest trace of a smirk.

I very much enjoyed the somewhat simplistic typecasting of Ryan as Faustus, just as I once enjoyed the equally obvious typecasting of Cumberbatch as a cold uber-intelligent Frankenstein (which role, when played by the more warm and gentle Jonny Lee Miller just did not work at all, Miller being more sympathetic as the much maligned Creature). However, I will not see Grierson in the Faustus role, so unlike in the Cumberbatch-Miller case, I can't assess the ramifications and rewards in this production of seeing the actors play against their types.

4 stars from me.

Does anyone remember the brilliant RSC version with Iam Mckellen and Emrys James, and some very sordid, distressed puppets as the sins and Helen. Stunning production. Ben Kingsley and James Maxwell at the Royal Exchange werer also in a memorable production.