 | Colin Stinton, Dominic Hoffman, and
David Rasche in Dr. Faustus
(Photo © Bill Faulkner) |
The worst compliment you can pay an artist is to insist that he repeat himself. David Mamet's short, jolting blows to the solar plexus in works such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross have kept us so enthralled that the arch, artificial language in Dr. Faustus, his new play at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, has thrown everybody into a tizzie.
From Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (c. 1590) to John Adams's Dr. Atomic (world premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2005), the legend of Faust has long occupied Western civilization's major dramatists and composers. Yet could any match seem less made in heaven than that of Mamet, America's poet of terse, four-letter words, and Faust, the pompous establishment philosopher who sells his soul for a frat boy illusion of immortality?
At least, that's what the character does in Marlowe and in the most profound Faust of all, Goethe's massive, two-part play. There is no sex in the thankfully short Mamet work, no Margarethe, no Duchess of Parma, no Helen of Troy. Mamet's Dr. Faustus (David Rasche) is a self-regarding academic who has just finished his magnum opus and wants to talk about it (and talk and talk) while his young son lies dying in another room.
Despite the efforts of his wife (Sandra Lindquist) and best friend (Colin Stinton) to recall the conceited ass to his domestic duty, Faustus debates life, death, religion, and politics in long, baroque phrases that wrap themselves around the actor's tongue and damn near strangle him. The play opened on February 28 (it's been sold out for months) and I didn't see it until March 11, by which time I had hoped that complaints of opening night jitters, forgotten dialogue, and jumbled sentences would have been addressed. They hadn't been -- at least, not as concerns Rasche, who bears the major burden of Mamet's arcane language.
The diction is vaguely Shakespearean, but an odd parody version. When Faustus, having sold his soul to Magus (Dominic Hoffman), wanders in a cold void of graves in Act II, his friend (now blind and elderly) offers a series of gravedigger-like aphorisms that make one think, somewhat cruelly, "This play is a bad marriage between Hamlet and Waiting for Godot."
Yet we are talking about David Mamet, whose witty screenplays and coruscating stage works attest to a sharp mind, an encompassing world view, and a love of language that is both respectful and passionate. From the friend and Magus, we get a number of laugh-out-loud philosophical zingers. Faustus has hard truths to tell about religion and politics -- some of his first act speeches read like abstract indictments of our current establishment leaders -- yet Rasche's constant stumbling and slowing down spoiled almost every punch line during the performance I attended.
It's hard to blame the actor alone for his delivery, since Mamet himself "directed" the production. I'm not sure what that means, as the blocking is minimal; it consists mostly of the actors sitting on various squares that litter the small stage. (Peter Larkin is listed as "set design consultant.") Russell H. Champa's lighting is commonplace until the ambiguous ending, when he lights the audience -- an old 1960s trick that makes little sense in this context and does not help illuminate what actually happens to the feckless Faust. Fumiko Bielefeldt's costumes lend the piece a vaguely 19th-century feel but I wish that the wife's white petticoat had not dragged below her modest, nun-gray gown.
Because Mamet's Dr. Faustus is so short (aproximately 90 minutes with intermission), because Stinton and Hoffman are more lively and accurate in their delivery than Rasche, and because Hoffman's magic tricks are so enjoyable (they were designed by Michael Weber and Ricky Jay, who was originally cast as Magus until illness prevented him from taking the part), the show is not boring. Still, it would have been nice to feel included in the proceedings rather than sensing that Mamet thinks he's above his audience and can get away with putting any words he likes, in any order, into the mouths of his characters.
He can't. And, in trying to do so, he not only baffles his audience but insults his leading player, who has had a long and honorable career as a Mamet ensemble member. What have we done to David Mamet -- besides make him rich and famous -- that he feels the necessity to punish us and his actors with such cold, stilted, affectless language in a play that is meant to explore the world's deepest philosophical questions?
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