“How Does the Devil Keep Time?” Review: Faustus: That Damned Woman

There is nothing uniquely male about selling your soul.

Mark Fisher

The story of Faustus, a doctor bored of the limits of humanity and his own mortality makes a deal with the devil. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well.
The one thing that always bugged me about the original play, is that Faustus uses his hellish powers just to play pranks. Yes, of course that’s partly the point of it all. A man who has everything demands for more, and then wastes it. But, something about it felt empty.

Chris Bush’s re-telling of the classic canonical tale fills that void. When I first heard about this new version, I was at first skeptical (many re-writings of canonical texts to put women at the forefront can sometimes feel forced), and I assumed that this female Faustus would follow in the same path as Marlowe’s scholar. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Johanna Faustus is a character of low-birth status, and has very little agency over her own life. Instead of striking a deal with Lucifer purely to gain inhuman power, she seeks autonomy and the ability to control her destiny. This production is less of a fable warning us to be careful for what we wish for, but instead shows us how society treats women who seek prominence.

Inserting female characters into or ‘gender-bending’ classical plays has become quite common. You can take a look at quite a number of RSC productions to see this in practice. Although this does create more roles for women on stage, it barely even scratches the surface of the gender inequality in theatre. I could write a whole other rant about it, but instead I’m pointing you towards Alice Flynn’s article about this – I wholeheartedly recommend you give it a read. What we really need, and what Bush gives us perfectly, are complete overhauls of the original texts; not just shoe-horning female characters into formerly male-dominated texts, but re-imagining these stories around female experiences. As Bush writes; “Inserting a woman into a traditionally male narrative complicates things. It creates more edges and obstacles.”

And we see that in Faustus: That Damned Woman, it isn’t just a female Faustus, it’s a woman trying to navigate a world that is so vehemently against her gender. The story still has the same themes as the original, none of that is lost in Bush’s adaptation. Johanna still has an unquenchable ambition, but it’s her motives that derail the original text and take us on an exciting path through unknown territory.

Long may we fill our stages with women just as messy, complicated and conflicted as any of their male counterparts

Chris Bush, Writer

I could write so much about this production, so much so I’m rather tempted to write a second post, but we shall see. Now, I love a good composite and clever set, no matter the scale of production. The stage is dimly lit with greyed-out blue and green colours, and what looks like an upturned, decaying boat covers a hay-strewn floor. I thought I’d somehow walked into a production of The Tempest. Still now, I’m not entirely sure what the paper-thin archways are supposed to be. The beams move like they’re slowly exploding throughout the play, coming back into one piece when Johanna meets her fate. A simple but nice metaphor as we see her life, and the world around her, deteriorating and breaking. As Johanna traverses time, we see the changing world projected onto these walls. However, my favourite use was seeing the names of those who wronged Johanna’s mother being crossed off as she hunted them down – rather like a physical form of Arya Stark’s infamous list.

I forgot how hard it was to write about a production without giving too many spoilers. University has beaten me into ‘giving detailed examples’. I’m trying very hard to tell you how bloody brilliant this play is without spoiling it!

This isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed Jodie McNee on stage. During my first ever trip to the National Theatre (and my first ever time in London) I got to see Our Country’s Good. Not my favourite I’ve gotta say, but it was for the sake of my A-Level Drama studies, and the best part about the whole production was McNee’s portrayal of Liz Morden. So, yes, this bit is going to be about how great I think she is. There’s a moment in the first half where Lucifer brings out the seven deadly sins. However, unlike in traditional portrayals, the sins aren’t presented as humanoid embodiments, but instead Lucifer literally brings out the sins within Johanna herself. McNee contorts and twists herself into various uncomfortable and uncanny positions, her voice warping as each sin seems to possess Johanna’s body. With each sin comes an example of Johanna’s damned soul, screaming from deep within her. There are so many other spectacular instances from McNee in this production, but I am still in awe of this moment.

Time to talk about one of my favourite characters in the theatre canon; Mephistopheles. The homoerotic subtext in the original play is fantastic; and if you haven’t read it before, you really should. I read a lot of underlying Queer themes in Marlowe’s text, but maybe I’m just bias. However, Bush’s reimagining has a lot of Queer coding, so I’d say I’m on the right lines here. Mephistopheles, one of Lucifer’s fallen angels, Light-Lover, a brooding character who laments for his damned soul, and… gay? Maybe. It’s not as simple as that, of course, but you’ve gotta love Lucifer a fair amount if you’re to risk it all with him. Not to mention there’s some translations of variations on the demon’s name that would imply he’s in love with Lucifer. Maybe I’m looking to far into this, but almost every portrayal of a demon or a devil I have seen has been rather camp – just look at David Tennant in Good Omens, need I say more? Getting back to my point, Danny Lee Wynter’s Mephistopheles inherits all of these implications and subtextual characteristics, and it is brilliant. Of course, in this production there is no homoerotic subtext between Mephistopheles and Faustus because, well, Faustus is a woman. Even then, the exclusion of this and the visible turmoil we see from Wynter when Lucifer commands Mephistopheles to leave his side and do Johanna’s bidding only reiterates this hellish love. I don’t know enough about the performance of camp identities to really write about it, but Wynter gives a nuanced portrayal of my favourite camp demon, and on top of a beautiful costume, I can’t help but love it.

I kind of missed the subplot of Wagner & Robin, but the production still manages to have it’s moments of comedic relief in a less jarring manner. There is a nod to the name Wagner in the second half which I appreciated, and I did wonder if the two women at the beginning of the play were versions of these characters, already trained in magical arts, but I like not knowing. It fits the production well.

This production is just phenomenal. I want to see it again. Bush has expertly re-imagined this traditional play and created something so much more current, complicated, and responsive. We see what happens when a woman is given infinite power, how she tries to fix the world to spite Lucifer, even if her morals are questionable. She’s already damned, what’s the worst that could happen to her now? I almost want to say that this is what would have happened in the traditional play if only Faustus were to be more headstrong, but that feels like an insult to Bush’s character. The issue is not her flesh, as Johanna says, but the world around her.

Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

I couldn’t tell you why, but ever since I read Marlowe’s play, I’ve always liked that quote. So, to hear it in Bush’s text really made my heart happy. Often it is the simplest of things that can make you love a production. I think this one will stay with me for a long time.

I’m, aware this post is rather late, but I do have a very good excuse. I’ve been writing for the RBSA and I’ll link my first post there soon! Faustus: That Damned Woman (dir. Caroline Byrne) is showing at the Birmingham REP until 7th March and then it heads to Bristol Old Vic from 10th to 21st March. There are no official content warnings for the production, but I think it needs some! CW: Loud screaming, sudden blackouts, one instance of mild self-harm, and frequent mention of death. It may sound like a lot, but I would say it’s not too bad on the whole.