Thoughts about updating plays to a modern audience
From
Anson Carmichael@21:1/5 to
All on Sun Mar 3 17:29:32 2019
Perhaps this is more commentary than a question, but it is in regards to
the classic play "Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe and ponders the necessities of altering the original work to make it relevant to a
modern audience...
Last year I saw the play "Faust" by a local theatre company. The play seems
to be performed here and there on occasion, just not very often. The play is
in iambic pentameter and the setting is around England in the 16th century, which is when it was written. Because of this, I understand the urge to
update the play to the interests of a modern audience, but I wonder if rewriting a play works as often as people think.
In the performance I saw, the director took from Christopher Marlowe's
play "Doctor Faustus" and, supposedly, mixed with Goethe's "Faust" to
create something new. It certainly was "new", but I'm not sure how I feel
about it.
In the original Marlowe version of Faust, Doctor Faustus sells his soul
to the devil and dreams of changing the course of history with his new
power. By the end of the play, however, he is reduced to performing
magical amusements for the king and queen. Marlowe's point was that by
selling his soul to the devil, Faustus was turning away from God, which
in turn was the wellspring from which great accomplishments are achieved.
Thus, Faustus begins the play as a great man of knowledge and by the end he
is reduced to a kind of jester.
In the version of Faust by the local theatre company, Faust just rapes everybody. I mean that literally. Faust sells his soul to the devil and
his first act thereafter is find a gambler who is willing to sell his
daughter in exchange for winnings. Then he stops a wedding to kill the
groom and rape the bride. After that, he kills a knight who is unimpressed
with him and has sex with a queen while the king is given loads of gold. In between all of this, some characters (I assume they were the Seven Deadly
Sins) come out and talk about how Faustus is damned for his actions.
This is very different from the Marlowe play. In the Marlowe play, Faustus shows off his power in the beginning but becomes more and more of a joke. Further, there are intermittent comedic scenes featuring Faustus' manservant who find's Faustus' book of magic and plays pranks with it on his friends.
This meant as a comedic interlude between scenes of Faustus running around doing his thing. All of this is to show Faustus failing at his ambitions because of his erroneous assumption that gaining power would not change him.
As I mentioned before, I do understand the need to put a modern spin on an
old story. This is especially true for stories written in an old style from
so long ago. I feel in this case, however, the director destroyed the nuance
of the original work and replaced it with something less nuanced and even approaching camp. At the end of the play, the song "Sympathy for the Devil"
by the Rolling Stones came in over the speaker system. I just had to cringe
and how clichéd that has become. It was just hitting all the obvious notes,
if that makes sense. On the other hand, it did receive a number of
nominations for the production, so perhaps I'm the one out-of-step with the audience rather than the director and theatre company.
Can anyone give any thoughts on this?
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