The Tripod

Issue date: 4/14/03 Section: Arts

Scott Troost ‘05 plays the tormented Dr. Faust

Anne-Louise Marquis ’06 and Meghan Boone ’06 as Gretchen.

James Porter ‘04 is a devious devil.

"Are you going to interact with us?" an audience member asked Faust!!! member Ward MacDonald '03 after watching cast members warming up, lounging around the set, and talking freely to the audience filing into Garmany Friday night. "Would you like us to interact with you?" MacDonald answered coyly.

When you imagine a traditional performance of Faust, you prepare yourself to experience beautifully old and intricate language and passionate performances evoking the deep drama of a tortured man who makes a deal with the devil. When you imagine a traditional Mitchell Polin (adapter and director of Faust!!!) production, you first laugh at the idea of calling anything Polin does 'traditional' and then prepare yourself to get rid of your expectations because there's no real way to anticipate what's going to happen in a Polin piece.

Faust!!! lived up to both my expectations and non-expectations. Not only was it touched by the traditional Polin madness, but it also maintained the beautiful language and passionate performances that one would think of in a more traditional interpretation of Faust. The biggest success of the production, in my opinion, was its ability to hold and engage the audience, for the most part, during the over three-hour long production. This is not an easy feat, especially considering the construction of the piece. In creating Faust!!! Polin took text from Yohann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Jarry, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Linklater, and worked to incorporate different versions of Faust into the production as well as other texts he found relevant to the piece.

Not only did Polin splice together a variety of texts for his piece, he also cast each main character in duplicate. This artistic choice gave each character the added depth of a simultaneous double interpretation, which one was of the effects that helped to keep the piece interesting throughout. Scott Troost ('05) and Brad Beitz ('04) both tackled the role of Dr. Faustus. Troost gave, as usual, a top-notch performance, deftly capturing the tortured Faust who is tricked into discarding his studies by the devil, Mephistopheles, (Emily Tucker '05 and James Porter '04) in pursuit of 'real' life, in particular his romantic emotions in regard to the young Gretchen (Anne-Louise Marquis '06 and Meghan Boone '06). In contrast, Beitz's interpretation of Faust played up Faust's lust for Gretchen as the prime motivator for his continued dealings with Mephistopheles.

In case you were wondering, the basic plot of Faust is: Devil talks to God and asks if s/he can tempt Faust. God (Ben Faye '04) says: 'Whatever floats your boat. I'm not getting involved.' The Devil approaches Faust and offers to make a deal to serve him and Faust says: 'Sure, why not?' Then, Faust sees an attractive young girl pass by (Gretchen) and asks the Devil to help him seduce her. So, the Devil conjures up some expensive gifts for Faust to hide in her room. (Because ornate jewelry is the way to every girl's heart, don't you know?) Somehow this works, and next thing you know the goodie-goodie Gretchen has fallen head-over-heels for our dear Dr. Faust. In this case, love skips right over marriage and heads for the baby in the baby carriage. Gretchen's reputation is ruined and her brother goes to defend her honor, threatens Faust and is killed by him. Somewhere, while all this is going on, Gretchen finds time to kill her mother, her newborn baby, and is condemned to death. Interestingly, Polin chose to damn Gretchen in the end, departing from Goethe's decision to save her.

Faust!!! was more of an event than a play about a man's tango with the Devil. It was based as much in music and movement as it was in the text of Faust. The band Tungsten 74 provided a live music background to the show that helped pep up the show's energy and level of audience engagement. Almost every cast member got a chance to sing a song: the highlight of the night being the "sing off" between the two Fausts after the intermission. Both Beitz and Troost showed of their rockstarocity in a little musical duel of the Fausts.

It was the performances that kept this piece as strong as it was and I feel the need to do a little hat tipping now to all the cast members who worked especially hard not only in memorizing often difficult and wordy text, but also in giving engaging dramatic performances, and rocking the mic like true rockstars. Not to leave anyone out, the cast list is as follows: Seth Abramson, Brad Beitz, Meghan Boone, Ben Faye, Jamie-Lynn Fontaine, Emily Forman, Ward MacDonald, Anne-Louise Marquis, Caitlin Mehner, James Porter, Marli Reifman, Daniel Rubin, Scott Troost, and Emily Tucker. I've already spent some time bowing down to the acting prowess of our Fausts, but I feel it's necessary to now devote a little Tripod love to the Gretchens (Boone and Marquis). For practically the last hour of the show, the Gretchens had to writhe around on stage in mental anguish over killing their mother and child. Some people have a hard enough time faking tears on stage and these actresses were able to maintain an extremely high level of emotion for an exorbitant amount of time.

Polin and the cast tackled a very difficult scene with creativity, stellar performances and sincere emotions. Reifman took center stage with a heartwrenching performance of Beckett's "Not I." She was supported in this effort by the physical movement of the two Gretchens, which conveyed their mental anguish as well as any words could. Most disturbingly to the audience, perhaps, was the mutilation of teddy bears, which the rest of the cast performed. The violence of this act explored the loss of innocence and Gretchen's infanticide. The scene fell back into Goethe's text as Marquis and Troost's chemistry delved into Gretchen's looming insanity.

Now that I've gotten on the topic of time, I feel that its about that time for me to take my 'pat everyone on the back' hat off and put on my critic hat. I'm usually all about the patting on the back and skip over criticism entirely, but every once in awhile a voice whispers words like 'journalistic integrity' and 'suck up' in my ear - so to shut it up, I'm actually going to say something critical for a change. I think Faust!!! would have been better off with one less of its three exclamation points and one less of its three hours. Most people who have seen it that I've talked to about it were inclined to agree with me. While I think the cast did a good job of holding it together and maintaining the engagement level throughout, I think the piece would only be strengthened if its loose structure was tightened a bit and its focus made a little clearer.

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