Theater: Deviled Marlowe

The Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus is Christopher Marlowe’s greatest play. The current off-Broadway effort by the Phoenix Theater’s repertory company is not so much a revival as a disinterment. It is a clammy sort of compliment to pay the Elizabethan playwright in the 400th anniversary year that he shares with Shakespeare, but perhaps better than no celebration at all.

In the prologue to an earlier Marlowe play, The Jew of Malta, the playwright declared: I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. Faustus holds the same views, but this time the play moves in exactly the opposite direction. Here religion is a dominion of implacable law reducing man and his will to a broken toy; and it is knowledge that is tainted with evil. Through Satan’s agent Mephistophilis (James Ray), the learned Dr. Faustus (Lou Antonio) makes a pact with the Devil. He wills his soul to eternal damnation for 24 years of life, during which he will unlock all the secrets of the universe, command all earthly power, be granted every whim of pleasure. The request makes Faustus an archetype of Western man, with his aspiring mind, towering ambition, compelling curiosity and vaulting pride. With Mephistophilis to do his bidding, Dr. Faustus conjures up spirits, becomes invisible, plays pranks on the Pope, and makes love to Helen of Troy (“Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?”).

Pleasure breeds remorse and despair; yet Faustus cannot repent. He can grasp the letter of God’s law (“The reward of sin is death: that’s hard”), but he cannot conceive the saving grace of Christ. He asks Mephistophilis why the Devil’s agent is out of hell, and Satan’s servant answers: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss? As Faustus is dragged into the flame-red torture pit, he recognizes a more searing anguish than fire—eternal exile from God.

Mounting a lavish display of props, costumery and lighting effects, the Phoenix production camouflages the entire metaphysical tragedy and smothers the tensions in Marlowe’s imagination, which was fearfully and longingly obsessed by the Christianity that his intelligence scoffed at and rejected. The cast gargles “Marlowe’s mighty line” like polysyllabic mouthwash, except for James Ray’s Mephistophilis, who, to give him his due, is devilishly good. By contrast, Lou Antonio in the title role is fumbling and playboyish. It is rather too bad that Faustus’ pact with Satan should overlook mastery of the part.