05/04/2014

Faustus

Bell Shakespeare, 2011
Photo by Rob Maccoll for Queensland Theatre Company.
While strictly not Shakespeare, Michael Gow’s adaptation of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus fused the Elizabethan tragedy with Goethe’s Faust, as well as fragments of puppetry, opera, video projections and a devilishly good dose of audacity, while seeming to utilise every theatrical style imaginable. John Bell dancing in a steel-blue suit as Mephistopheles, Ben Winspear’s rock-god Faustus; a trio of devils singing a Schubert lieder, and a beautifully school-girlish Gretchen in Kathryn Marquet, gave us a vision of hell quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It was sexy, dangerous, edgy and above all, deliciously good fun.