Review: Doctor Faustus @ The Globe

Written for Exeunt

There’s a lovely irony to the Globe making  Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus part of their The Word Is God season.  Faustus is a demonic tale and one in which words, books, can be tools of evil, can lead you terribly astray.

Marlowe’s best known play is packaged here in a marvellously batty production by director Matthew Dunster; though it sometimes plays more like a cautionary children’s tale than chilling psychological tragedy, it is as enticing and entertaining as the devious spirits that Faustus follows blindly into hell.

Review – Doctor Faustus

Written for What’s On Stage – 19/1/10

Doctor Faustus at Stratford Circus until Saturday 6 February.

Men stand in artfully geometric lines swathed in 50s Macs and stylish trilbys. We could be down on the waterfront but instead we are plunged into a sexy, clubbing version of Christopher Marlowe’s hellish play, Doctor Faustus.

The tale of Faustus selling his soul to the devil, partying like a fiend for four and 20 years and then finally paying the price is one of the best known in the English speaking world. So it is baffling that a production that has such a consummate visual style could get the telling of this epic tale so amiss. And yet it does.