Another Day, Another Play

Yes. I like it here.

Doctor Faustus was sort of what I expected, but really not at all. It was dark, but also funny, and frightening, and really kind of moving.

The play tells the story of Doctor Faustus, who sells his soul to Lucifer in exchange for 24 years with one of Lucifer's right-hand men, Mephistopheles. He becomes rich and powerful and does all these terrible things, but ultimately dies when his years are up, being dragged off by demons to torment forever in hell. All the while he briefly contemplates turning back to God, but Mephistopheles and his Bad Angel (you know, like the one on his shoulder) keep telling him he can't, despite his Good Angel's urging to do so.

The play was super elaborate, with these enormous costume pieces and people on stilts and trapdoors and fire leaping out of books and stuff--things I never expected the Globe could manage. It was all wonderful. My favorite was by far Mephistopheles, who could go from restrained to charming to terrifying at the drop of a hat. I really enjoyed his relationship with Faustus; I felt like Mephistopheles really cared about him and would become jealous, almost hurt, when Faustus considered turning back to God.

My favorite part of the play, though, came probably because it was so entirely unexpected. There is a character at the end simply called the Old Man, who enters, has 3 long lines urging Faustus to turn to Heaven, and leaves when Faustus tells him he can't, it's too late. I didn't pay him much mind when I read the play, but seeing it I got an entirely different perspective. When the man entered, I watched him deliver his lines for a moment, and then my eyes turned to Mephistopheles. He was pinned against the pillar in complete and total terror, almost in tears, struck completely useless by the presence of the Old Man. And I realized: he was God, coming to make one final plea to Faustus to realize his errors and come home. Unlike Mephistopheles, who came in in a cloud of smoke with a red cape, conjuring dancing demons to prove himself, the Old Man came in with nothing, unassuming as always, and simply asked. I cried a little. Seeing Mephistopheles, who was so calm and in control the entire play, suddenly reduced to this frightened child, was a really beautiful moment. And the fact that Faustus rejected him once again finally sealed his fate--we watched seconds later as demons literally carried him offstage into smoky Hell.

Anyway, that was my favorite part. It was kind of when I realized the severity of the material. And I'm finding it very difficult to dislike anything that I see at the Globe--what a problem to have.

To recap the rest of my day, we went to the London Eye before the show, which was a great view of the city but not much else. The plan was the Tower of London, but our professor assigned us a paper on Much Ado due tomorrow so we decided we needed the extra time to work on it before the show. We'll probably go to tomorrow, see the Crown Jewels and all that.

It's a late night in the flat. What with Faustus going a bit longer than the rest of the shows we've seen (it was 3 hours) and only an hour or two to work on our paper this afternoon, we're all cramming a bit. But hey, any excuse to write about my beloved Claudio, I'm happy.

Cheerio!

-Charlotte