Faust, Part 1

Shotgun Players performs Mark Jackson’s free adaptation of Goethe’s Faust, Part 1 at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley, an artistic examination of the self-aware human. 

Mark Jackson’s bold script begins with a monologue that reveals Faust as an intellectual giant, a scholar’s scholar.  However, despite his vast and deep knowledge, he is a flop with chicks. 

Well, there is much more than that.  Having distanced himself from the objects of desire, he yearns for them, becoming the classic romantic.  He knows about life but has not lived.  He has discovered that human life is a hungering for one thing after another, that he is nothing but an empty articulate self-awareness. 

Jackson’s script employs the older way of plays, using fairly long speeches in verse, occasionally rhymed, usually at least clever and often succinctly profound.  His verse is never bad, which when coupled with the ideas in the play, makes it quite good. 

Jackson plays Faust and plays the character very well.  In one scene he repeats the same long speech five times, evading the question of his religious belief, each time very differently, and each time keeping the audience.  Mark Jackson is a talented and versatile actor. 

Jackson also directed the play, which in whole is fascinating, alternately funny and deeply sad, at times surrealistic if not insane. 

Blythe Foster innocently and coyly plays Gretchen, the object of Faust’s desire, at once pious and temptible.  She puts up a fight but she’s human too and descends the long staircase of love with Faust, down and away from her ideas of herself as a member of a family and a society, down into the singular experience that she is nothing at all except an ironic self-awareness. 

Peter Ruocco plays the impeccably confident Mephistopheles who treats the educated Faust like a student.  He deftly and blamelessly plays a magician, counselor, and procurer.  In asides and other moments, he too shows that he can see himself, although he is much more faithful to his job than the humans he serves and who must eventually serve him. 

Zehra Berkman plays Gretchen’s mother as a powerfully desperate invalid who clutches and confines her daughter by guilt and duty and religion.  Tragically, she never becomes aware of herself but mechanically pursues the objects of her desire.  She is all for sacrifice but the sacrifice must be someone else's. 

Dara Yazdani amusingly and briefly plays a young and innocent student, perhaps Faust as novice, and returns later as Gretchen’s intense and vengeful brother Valentin.  The characters were so different that I didn’t realize the double casting until the curtain call. 

Phil Lowery ably plays Wagner, Faust’s straight man, who worships the scholar and scholarship but does not approach the standards of the man himself.  His relationship amplifies Faust's grandeur. 

Matt Stines' excellent and awesome sound, Nina Ball’s surreal set and Joan Arhelger’s brilliant lighting complete Shotgun’s flawless stagecraft. 

The adaptation is post-modern in that religion and other over-arching narratives recede quaintly into the background while the individual steps forth to take command.  There really is no substance. 

Mephistopheles is not Hell's angel at all but merely that perfectly patient little internal voice that urges us to take something for ourselves for once.  We've worked hard.  Why not? 

Perdition becomes merely the disintegration of the individual, the separation of self from self-image, from its supposed reputation, the down-side of ego-loss followed by the fear of ignominious death.  Religion threatens to march back in to offer us its narrative of salvation and punishment, as if there really were a point to it all. 

Life is nothing, except possibly the knowledge that life is nothing and then saying so artfully, at times sad, at times funny, one after another in playful succession. 

I’m going to see this fine play again to get more of the richness of Jackson’s verse and all that the cast and crew have invented to bring this tale to life.  

Faust, Part 1 plays until June 21 at the Ashby Stage, across the street from the Ashby BART.  May 21, 23 & 24 are Pay-What-You-Can nights. 

http://www.shotgunplayers.org/