I love small theater venues. You get a much better sense of what’s going on and the story becomes more intimate. Actors spend long hours not just memorizing lines but practicing acting and reacting to each other and to the story. It’s nice to be close enough to see all of that. Large venues can be impersonal but small venues bring the action almost into your lap.
The Barnvelder (or the Barn) is such a place. The stage dressing is minimal and the costumes are pretty spare but the acting is top-notch and really that’s what you’re there to see.
I first became aware of the Classical Theater Company at a convention a couple of years ago. As the name suggests they do only classical works of theater but with small modernizing twists here and there. Dr Faust was a good example. The actors were all dressed in 1920s style clothes and old-time music played in the background on a Vitrolla but the story itself wasn’t changed.
Most people just know Dr Faust for the catchphrase “Faustian bargain” but know little more than that. Often they will confuse it with the American short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and assume it ends well.
In the story a young German student is deciding what course his life will take. He is bored with medicine, law, science, and considers religion to be stifling. However he is fascinated with necromancy and sees it as a liberating field of study that will set him above his fellow-man.
He summons a devil called Mephistopheles and asks for this power. Mephistopheles answers that he can only do that if Lucifer allows him and the price for that would be Faust’s soul. Faust readily agrees without thought and signs a contract for 24 years. He assumes he has cheated Lucifer as he does not believe that the soul exists and that when he dies nothing will happen to him even though Lucifer has made it plain what it will happen and introduces him to the seven deadly sins.
So for the next few years Faust and Mephistopheles travel the world and do whatever they want. They pester the Pope, they meet with royalty, they summon the spirits of Alexander the great and Helen of Troy, and generally Faust has a good time, until he meets an old man on a country road.
The old man tells Faust that he has squandered the most precious thing he owns for petty gains and that he will spend eternity in torment for it. This creates doubt in Faust and his resolve cracks. He thinks about repenting but Mephistopheles chastises him. Faust says that he will never again repent if he could spend a night of passion with Helen of Troy. Mephistopheles grants his wish.
As his time is coming to an end Faust becomes more and more worried. He begins to see that he has made a horrible bargain. On his final day on Earth he tries to repent and pray but is restrained by the bargain he had made with Mephistopheles. He cries out to the mountains to hide him, to the ground to open up and swallow him and to the stars to lift him up but it is to no avail. Hell opens up and drags him off.
The play itself was portrayed by 4 actors.
James Belcher from the Alley theater acting company portrayed Mephistopheles
Adam Gibbs played the title role of Faust,
Dain Geist who had previously played Hamlet played the part of the chorus as well as other small parts such as Lucifer, and the pope,
Joanna Hubbard who played Ophelia in Hamlet was also part of the chorus and other small parts such as Helen of troy and a cardinal.
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