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Doctor Faustus

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, West End
From: Saturday, 18th June 2011
To: Sunday, 2 October 2011

Our Review: starstarstar Your Reviews: starstarstarstar

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Synopsis

Faust is the story of an old philosopher who sells his soul to the Devil in return for youth and love and a young Marguerite, seduced and abandoned.

Our Review: starstarstar

24 June 2011

The Faustian legend doesn't quite strike terror into the heart of modern audiences. Elizabethan theatregoers would have been fearful of the dire fate awaiting Faustus, in this more secular age, we’re a bit more indifferent to his plight.

The Globe’s new production attempts to marry Faustus’ story with elements of farce. Director Matthew Dunster, has cut many of the more serious passages of the play. Much of the Latin has been excised – including the famous “Lente, lente currite…” while full play has been given to Marlow’s humorous passages. Every trick is employed – from puppets to stilt-walkers – mixed in with Jules Maxwell’s music, which sounded like it was from a sit-com.

For all the trickery, there’s something missing. Paul Hilton doesn’t really capture the extent of Faustus’s existential despair. There’s little sense of his dissatisfaction with the world and rather than be...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 23 July 2011: starstarstarstar

One of the joys of theatregoing is when a show confounds expectations. My last experience of Marlowe was the excruciatingly dull Dido. . . at the Cottesloe which I abandoned at the interval. That sort of production would have been even worse at the Globe but Matthew Dunster plays up all the crowd-pleasing elements of Faustus, although I wonder how much of it Marlowe would have recognised. The confrontations between good and evil are played to the hilt as is the parade of the seven deadly sins and the clowns Robin and Dick milk their scenes for all they're worth. Frankly Paul Hilton and Artur Darvill aren't up to much as Faustus and Mephistopholes and there is almost no suggestion of a soul in torment or the devil's disciple. However this doesn't detract from what serves as an ideal introduction to Marlowe even if it didn't fire me with a desire to see a more reverent production....

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