Mark Brown: Sympathy for the devil at Bard In The Botanics

The National

2 days ago

In the theatre, the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1790 version of the story stands as one of the totemic texts of dramatic literature. Predating all of the above, however, is Christopher Marlowe's famous Elizabethan tragedy Doctor Faustus.
First staged in 1592, this play by one of Shakespeare's most eminent contemporaries was ripe for adaptation by Bard in the Botanics, the annual mini-festival of works by the man of Stratford and other classical writers. Marlowe's drama – in which Faustus is pulled back and forth between demonic temptation and heavenly redemption – is a work of compelling intensity.
This version – which has been compressed by director Jennifer Dick to just 80 minutes – cuts to the thematic chase. Consequently, watching this adaptation is sometimes akin to viewing a tennis match, with the forces of Heaven (Rebecca Robin) and Hell (Sam Stopford) as the players and Faustus (Adam Donaldson) as the ball.
Dick's reconstructed text reduces Marlowe's dramatis personae from 17 named characters to a mere three (plus additional figures, played by the cast). The piece survives its radical truncation thanks both to the richness of Marlowe's language and the vividness of certain scenes.
The not-so-good doctor's metaphysical mockery of the Pope is a case in point. This scene – which, one assumes, only got past the late-16th-century censor thanks to the Elizabethan English state's hostility to Roman Catholicism – retains its capacity to shock more than 400 years on.
The placing of Faustus in modern dress – complete with a stethoscope – neither enhances nor detracts from the drama; not least because the characters of The Good Angel and Mephistopheles are represented in costumes that seem somehow timeless in their broad evocation of Renaissance dress.
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Donaldson's Faustus is almost naïve in the alacrity with which he parts with his eternal spirit. It is a facet of Dick's extensive abridging that the doctor appears easily swayed, from one moment to the next, by both the Angel and Mephisto.
Robin, for her part, plays God's emissary with a convincing ethereality and an air of palpable forgiveness.
It is, however, Stopford's performance as Mephistopheles that truly captivates. Dick is fortunate indeed that she has at her disposal the talents of an actor who is – in numerous regards – brilliantly suited to the role of Lucifer's sinisterly persuasive minion.
Stopford is an actor blessed with more than his fair share of menace. His brilliantly balanced Mephisto also has an underlying anguish and, ultimately, an absolute ruthlessness that speak to his brutal separation from any sense of hope.
This is, then, an unevenly adapted version of Marlowe's play, but one that is – typically of Bard in the Botanics – presented with admirable boldness and bravery.
Until July 12: bardinthebotanics.co.uk