DOCTOR FAVSTVS (The Show Must Go Online)*****

 

By Megan

Link: https://www.patreon.com/TheShowMustGoOnline/posts                                                                                                                 

Available until: Unknown

Content warnings: This production contains noises and images that may be startling, sexual references and reference to suicide, along with depictions of self-harm and the occult.

Doctor Favstvs is the last full-length play in the Month of Marlowe and TSMGO give a brilliant performance just like they always do.

My mum wasn’t sure about letting me watch it at first but I have seen Faust by Charles Gounod and La Damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz so I know what happens or most of it. The basic story is the same as the operas but there is a very important character in the operas who isn’t in the play at all and there is a major character in this play who isn’t in the operas.

TSMGO have always been brilliant but in 2021 they have made big changes to the technical side like having subtitles and a sign language interpreter and I think this is really important because it means even more people can enjoy the plays. Jan Guest is the BSL interpreter and she is so amazing to watch. She is doing something really important but she is such a good performer she also adds something to the play and magnifies everything and makes it even better. 

The music and graphics are also really good. I like the way they have used Vs for Us in the title of Doctor Favstvs so I am doing that too because I am weird sometimes and I really like it. The two sounds of U and V did exist in Early Modern English but they were written in the same way. That is why the letter we call ‘double u’ looks like a double v. U started to be used in the 1300s but it wasn’t really official till the 1600s. Doctor Favstvs was first performed in 1592 so it probably just missed out on the Us.

This really surprised me at first because U and V are so different, they are not even both consonants. But then I remembered there are lots of letters with more than one sound like G. They are both consonants but they are quite different really. J is more like Ch than G. I wondered if maybe that might change too so all the soft Gs are Js (which is how it is in Welsh, all the Gs are hard Gs but they use Js for borrowed words like ‘garej’ which means ‘garage’) but then I decided it’s not very likely to change because there is so much writing which is printed in books and on the internet. But language is changing all the time so something else might change. I used to write sulphur like you get in fireworks but now I write sulfur like it says on my periodic table because that’s the official spelling.

Doctor Favstvs is a really brilliant and exciting story which you get really invested in but another thing I really liked about it is what it told you about the time when the play was written. There is a bit where they talk about astronomy and it is really interesting to see what they knew then and compare it with what we know now. TSMGO are really good at bringing these bits of the text across. They don’t always move the story on but the actors always say these bits in a really dramatic and interesting way which makes you really want to listen to them.

I really like the comedy scenes too. Some people think they’re not very good and that they weren’t really written by Marlowe. Maybe they weren’t because they do feel quite different from the rest of the play. But I don’t think they’re bad at all, I really enjoyed them and I thought the actors were really funny, including Eleanor Wilkinson (who is always really brilliant at comedy and characterisation but in this play she also shows how good she is at drama too) who plays Wagner and Gah-Kai Leung as Clown, Robin and other roles.

But Doctor Favstvs is more about the darkness and evilness and this is all really brilliant. Even though it’s all on Zoom screens the actors create the atmosphere really well. The actors make their own costumes and props and they also add movements which are really clever and you totally forget that they are mostly sitting down with a laptop or another device, it’s like they transport you to another world. There are lots of bits with prop passing and bit where Favstvs and Mephistophilis are holding different parts of the same book and it makes it feel even more real. It is so clever the way they make that work. The co-directors are Fergus Rattigan and Emily Ingram and they have put so much hard work and creativity into the whole production and I really love it.

Andrew Mockler is perfect for Favstvs because he is so good at making you care about characters you wouldn’t normally expect to like like when he played Willoughby in Sense & Sensibility for Sun & Moon Theatre. You like him straight away and that makes it really sad when you see what decisions he makes but it also means you are on his side for the whole play and I was hoping he would get out of it even though I didn’t think he would. I really like the way he shows the way Favstvs changes over time. His emotions are really powerful. I was so sad at the end.

Mark McMinn is a really interesting Mephistophilis because he isn’t how I expected at all. He is scary especially when he first appears but he’s not just someone who shows up and does bad stuff, he’s got a story too and I got really invested in it. Eleanor Neylon who also does the voice overs makes Lucifer a really powerful and scary character and I like the differences between Lisa Hill Corley and Yaize Freire-Bernat as the Good and Evil Angels. The whole cast is really good.

I think this is a really brilliant production of a really brilliant play and I hope lots of people will watch it.