Devilishly Good Entertainment

Today, I saw an incredible staging of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. It was at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Arts, set in a small black room in their big barn. The setting was nice and intimate.

I think the most most mind-blowing casting was for Mephistopheles, a strong woman with a deep voice named Diedre Devere Bollinger. Her costume was very masculine, complete with a strap-on bulge between her legs. When he (the character Mephistopheles) surrenders his sword to Doctor Faustus, I could not help but think this was castration. But the scene went further when Faustus asks Mephistopheles for a wife. Mephistopheles strips himself of the heavy padding on his chest to reveal a woman's torso in a black shirt and then strips himself of the bulge in between his legs.

It added something tragic to Mephistopheles enslaving himself to Faustus. In doing so, he emasculates himself, and by the end, I could not think of him as either a complete man or a complete woman. Just a shattered being, which I guess is what a fallen angel is.

I confessed to her after the show that I was almost scared to congratulate her because she frightened me so much. She played the demonic part very well but nevertheless played the human element very well, too. Her sorrow was very evident at having been thrown from Heaven along with Lucifer.

Matt Roehrig played a very sympathetic, and of course pompous, Doctor Faustus. He had an unwavering sincerity that added warmth to a part that seemed cold to me on paper (I read this play for high school). He debates repenting for selling his soul to the Devil, and this debate takes on the form of two voices: John Donaldson playing the Good Angel and Nicole Hamidi playing the Evil Angel. Very eerie effect to hear and not see these angels. Made me wonder whether Doctor Faustus was just imagining it. We the audience hope and pray for him to repent, but are sympathetic nevertheless when he doesn't.

Helen was played comically by a non-too-graceful Jacinthe Connor in a white mask and blonde wig. Matt's sensual baritone added to the humor of the scene. While Helen resembled a clown, Matt seemed like a German professor featured on the cover of a steamy Romance Novel... perhaps "Doctor Faustus Makes a House Call!"

Too bad I'm writing this now. Today was the last performance. But I'm just letting those know who didn't attend: y'all missed out.