Doctor Faustus at the Swan Theatre

Kelly Newman O’Connor

For performances of Doctor Faustus, a sign posted outside the RSC Swan Theatre advises audiences that “This production contains fire and scenes that some may find distressing.” Such as the sight of devils dragging a man down to hell, maybe? Though that is not how this production ends, there is still plenty to disturb, distress and terrify, as director Maria Aberg vividly redefines the notion of damnation for a 21^st century audience. At the start of the performance, two identically dressed actors face each other silently. As if performing a mirror acting exercise, they strike matches simultaneously and watch them burn. The first match to expire dictates which actor plays the role of Faustus, while the other actor exits to change into the costume of Mephistophilis. This bold choice gives Oliver Ryan and Sandy Grierson both of the plum roles, but without the safety net of scheduled role alternation. The night we saw it, Ryan played Faustus, his physicality all restless agitation and sudden frozen stillness as the enormity of his deeds appalls him. In contrast, Grierson’s Mephistophilis was smiling and sinuous, his relaxed economy of movement at odds with his tense fingernail-chewing and cat-at-the-mouse-hole stare. Both were superb—and no doubt would have been if the match-burning had gone the other way. The theater program includes a quotation from William Styron’s Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, outlining the idea of “a second self—a wraithlike observer who…watch[es] with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster,…