Word: faustus
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What was billed as the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus turned out to be the Comical History; whether for better or for worse, it is hard to say. I am tempted to say for the worse...
...have nothing against the use of comedy in Faustus; for all I know, many of the comic scenes were written by Marlowe himself. But, they could be used discriminately so as to bear some relation to the dramatic undercurrent, which is, for whatever else one may add, a theme of sin, torture, and hell, coupled with the secular joys which lie along the path to hell...
...Faustus that this joy and pain, this exaltation and fear of retribution, must be combined to form a character difficult if not impossible to portray on stage. James Straley does it well although he does not achieve the full childish joy Faustus finds in his power nor the full voluptuousness in his passions...
With whetstoned humor, but marred by too many obvious jokes and an inadequate production, the play leads Don Juan back to Hell, where Satan is in bed sick at heart, cursing his doctor ("that damned Faustus with his ridiculous penicillin"). When Don Juan reports that men on earth "have freed themselves of belief," Satan dies. The moral is obvious but far from negligible: without God, there can be no Devil...
...repertory company known as the Living Theater, managed since 1951 by Julian Beck, 34, and his wife Judith Malina, 33. So far, Living Theater has produced some 18 plays, half new, half old, all experimental in their time-Strindberg's The Spook Sonata, Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Pirandello's Tonight We Improvise, which now alternates with Connection...