Preview: Dr Faustus

“Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephistopheles.”

Image credits: Tom Barry

Doctor Faustus, directed by Toby Trusted, is showing Tue 6th – Sat 10th May in the ADC Theatre. This production picks up a notorious tale of ambition, folly and satanic persuasion. Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus follows a restless academic who sells out his soul to the demon Mephistopheles to further his occult studies and charts his descent into a writhing demonic underbelly.

Faustus is very Cambridge. Explaining his decision to pitch a production of Faustus, Toby jokes that there is perhaps nowhere where the consequences and purpose of self-serving academia should be inspected more. The staging decision to centre Faustus’ study was made to keep the production centred in academia, affording a cloying and insular mood that will not be unfamiliar to Doctor Faustus’ student audience, especially as Cambridge gears up for exam season. Toby is careful to keep his production from being moralising, rather an uneasy depiction of ambition, pride and academic property that promises much food for thought. His version is period, with Christopher 1592 original brought slightly later to 1700s costuming, promising a visual feast for fans of enlightenment fashion.

Image credits: Tom Barry

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Toby Trusted does update Faustus for a modern audience, making the refreshing choice to stage a female Doctor Faustus: Juliette Imbert takes on the role. This decision is clever in giving Faustus that extra reason in her desperation for academic power, Imbert tells me. Her extreme ambition is humanised, and I think made more convincing when we consider the scrutiny experienced by a stifled female academic, and the constant pressure on her credibility made much more acute than with the traditional male Faustus. It also adds an interesting caveat to her dynamic with her subjugate demon, Mephistopheles.

He is “the only man in her life who will obey”, Juliette says, noting a certain physical attraction or flirtation between the two when the element of competitiveness is removed, or muted. The interplay between Juliette Imbert’s Faustus and Alexander Payton’s Mephistopheles promises to be electric. Toby tells me how their dynamic is central to the production’s success – approximately half of the script is a duologue between them – meaning finding the right actors was so important, with chemistry auditions and recalls held. I anticipate an electric, reactive tension between the two. In the context of playing off a female Faustus, Payton plays Mephistopheles the same: for Payton, the play is really about the academic and existential, not physical.

Image credits: Tom Barry

Doctor Faustus is six months in the making, an uncommon production length for an early Easter term play. Toby tells me how advantageous this time scale has been in troubling out the complexities of Christopher’s tricky script. I’ve read Faustus, and agree that the lengthy descriptions of medieval planetary systems can be dense, to put it kindly. “It’s very much a show of two halves”, Toby says, with one being that heavy, insular academia, and the other that live, comic, frenetic energy of the demons. As much as Faustus is a play about the condition of the soul, it is also a play about magic, and The Cambridge University Amateur Dramatics Club anticipates exciting feats from its tech team.

Image credits: Tom Barry

Faustus may be larger than life and populated by high energy demons, yet it is also an exercise in sympathy: Can we find the humanity in a decision that seems completely satanic? After all, Faustus is essentially a character study on the human condition “in a very specific circumstance”, Toby says. His production looks to excavate the ambitious core of academia – and promises explosions as well.

The Cambridge University Amateur Dramatics Club’s Doctor Faustus is well worth leaving the library for in Week one of Easter Term. Step away from the books – and learn the value of doing so!

Doctor Faustus is showing in the ADC from Tue 6th – Sat 10th May. Don’t miss out on an electric and moving night of drama. Grab your tickets here! 

Featured image credits: Tom Barry