Dr. Faustus
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In our economically unscrupulous era, when soulless exploitation of labor has become America’s favorite spectator sport–not long ago everyone from Jay Leno to the Rolling Stones sang the praises of billionaire Bill Gates for becoming even more wealthy–it’s hard to understand why neither production of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus earlier this year bore even a tangential relationship to the real world. After all, Faustus is a lot like a Fortune 500 fat cat–or congressional fat-cat supplicant, for that matter– selling his soul to the devil for two simple things: wealth and power. He professes to want knowledge as well (not wisdom, mind you), but only because it allows him to control others. As he announces early in the play, imagining the benefits he will reap from practicing black magic, “O, what a world of profit and delight, / Of power, of honor, and omnipotence / Is promised to the studious artisan! / All things that move between the quiet poles / Shall be at my command.” Move over, Lee Iacocca.
The companies that brought Faustus to Chicago earlier this year–one from downstate, one from Canada–spent all their time trying to turn Marlowe’s not-so-good doctor into a despotic, self-absorbed, neo-expressionist ubermensch, blissfully failing to acknowledge contemporary realities. Of course, no law forbids a purely psychological reading of the play, but such a reading does require a bit of intuition and subtlety, not the harsh lighting, echoing sound effects, bulging eyes, and garish face paint of these productions. Just as they foolishly ignored real life, they also ignored the play itself; they paid attention only to themselves.
The Trap Door folks never attempt to reach the heights that perhaps only a great classical company could. Rather, for the first time since they opened a year ago, they’re capitalizing on the power of suggestion. We’re never asked to believe that the people onstage are anything but merely competent actors in their mid-20s trying without much success to find an audience; in fact before the show on opening night, artistic director Beata Pilch, portraying a half-crocked party guest, looked into the half-empty house and asked, “Where is everybody?” That honest admission removes a burden of proof from the company that otherwise might have crushed this production. They’re not trying to convince anybody of anything; they just want us to play along. And it works. Not brilliantly perhaps, but more often than not delightfully.
