Dr Faustus

Well that was two hours of my life I won't get back.



Saw the RSC production of Dr Faustus at the Barbican tonight. One of my colleagues noted with pleasure that the play was 1 hour 50 minutes with no interval, meaning he would get home at an earlier time. He hadn't reckoned with the fact that if there is no interval you can't leave at the interval. This play was that bad. Worse. I would genuinely have had a more fun evening if I had stayed in the office and worked late. Nothing on my to do list was as bad as this play - and I am a pension lawyer remember. Yes, it was that awful.



Truly it had no redeeming features whatsoever. It is a play without drama. Its philosophy is just cod philosophy dressed up as something profound and hallowed because its over 400 years old.It makes little sense. One could at least get somewhere if the play offered any reason for Faustus to waver between God and Lucifer, but it doesn't, you just get random doubts. And of course, since it was based in a God-fearing time, it is just accepted that God offers eternal salvation (er, which means what???) and that hell is just being without God. Yeah. I couldn't help but think the problem in Elizabethan England was that necromancy and the Church were in essence so similar a playwright would struggle to portray a difference in anything concrete. Frankly, the whole plot, along with all philosophical discourse, insofar as it is covered in the play, could have been encapsulated in the first 5 minutes. If one dragged it out a bit.



Of course the comedy, as is always the case in plays of this vintage, is about as funny as reading a telephone directory, and the titters from the audience really forced. To make it grate all the more, our German main protagonist has a strong Scottish accent. The fact that all the costumes are deliberately grotesque doesn't make it any less grotesque and so disagreeable.



If arcane theosophical debate is your bag, you might tolerate a little bit of this. As a reflection of its Elizabethan origins and society, it may have some academic interest; as an entertainment, well it offered nothing. Reviewing some pension documents would have been so much more fun. If I tell you the highlight of my evening was eating an egg sandwich in our canteen before we went to the Barbican, you may see how much I liked it. And yes it was doughy white bread too. That bad.