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A troupe of bare-topped demons flits about inexplicably at the doors
of Christ Church Cathedral. Only when you get inside do you realize that
they are probably awaiting the arrival of the audience for the in-house
production of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, and that they may
have a function. One of them slid towards me as I arrived, offered me
a soft unclad arm, and took me silently to my seat. She was extraordinarily
beautiful. “Are you a Deadly Sin?” my companion innocently asked
the similarly silent and underdressed lemur-like figure who was about
to take her to her place. Even before we were in our seats we had been
drawn in and affected by the eroticism of this unusual and haunting production.
The demons darted everywhere, full of strangeness, moving the scenes,
magnetizing the audience, drawing the action forward.
Most people will know something of the story of Dr Faustus, which appears
in many legends. Tired of scholarship, and unsatisfied by his worldly
achievements, Faustus turns towards magic for satisfaction, and he sells
his soul to the Devil in return for a period of unbridled pleasure and
power on earth.
Touched by the beautiful demons, perhaps many of the members of the audience
realized that they too had just been obliquely entangled into the world
of sensual pleasure which Marlowe’s Faustus is shown to find so much
more interesting and attractive than the world of duty and learning. The
pact which Faustus dramatically makes is shown to have its resemblances
with the way in which most of us live with the questions of good and evil,
pleasure-taking and conscience.
I have long thought that this play teaches its moral in a particularly
pungent way. The sheer luscious temptingness of sin is laid richly out
before us. The scene in which the seven deadly sins parade themselves
before Faustus reminds us of how thin and penny-whistle-like the Good
Angel’s voice may sound when set against the orchestral voices of
temptation. So we sympathize with Faustus, for his condition is our condition,
and it is perhaps partly for this reason that the final moral so accurately
reaches its “home” in us.
This company uses the Cathedral in a way more inspired and exciting than
I have ever seen before, and they fill it with noise, too, with fabulous
sounds from violins and harp, with huge vital blasts of organ music, and
with one small lovely unforgettable quavering voice too, at the very end.
Individuals whose performances stand out are Freyja Cox Jensen as Mephistophelis,
Harry Lloyd as Faustus, Saskia de Groot as envy. The large physical spaces
mentioned in the play lend themselves naturally to a promenade performance,
and so indeed the audience does promenade for a while - in chains. Don’t
miss this experience! Bring your friends! You will never forget it!
E.T., 10.03.03
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