By Jennifer Beasley
BUILDING TRIANGLES
Created by Unspooled Theatre Collective, I Love You, Faustus is a sixty-minute two-hander held at the oh-so-cute Explosives Factory for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Written by Laura Charlton and Sabina Donato, I Love You, Faustus is a love story, exploring the unspoken desires of Faustus, played with icy aloofness by a dynamic Ella Crowley, and her demon slave, Mephistopheles, a stellar performance with aching nuances from Lizzy Love. Set in current times, this piece intertwines the play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Elizabethan writer Christopher (Kit) Marlowe, with themes of fear of intimacy, owning otherness (or queerness), inactivity leading to climate change and love-what is real, and what isn’t?
The play opens slowly, and judging by the seat shuffles I wasn’t sure if things would improve enough to capture the audience. The wordiness of this play bogged it down; I would have liked to have seen some dialogue rich with sensory language, and perhaps more background on the two characters for greater emotional engagement. However, once the two actors got their teeth into conversation that was active (as well as good comedic pieces), they were able to raise this play and set it on its verbose feet.
I found the direction (Laura Charlton) fun and engaging; clever use of audience participation pepper throughout the performance kept the story moving, as well as power point projections to herald in pivotal scene changes. Lighting by Micah Patston, although minimal, was succinct enough for a one act play, and really, the dramaturgy strong enough that special effects were not required. I did find the set design by Ishan Vibekanantham basic. Perhaps more than a curtain hanging at the rear of the stage to add more gravity, although the inclusion of the large trunk on wheels was used to good comedic effect by Faustus.
What this play does well is the upending of expectations with the role reversal of Faustus and Mephistopheles. One does not normally equate a romantic intention between a demon and a self-serving autocrat when a soul is being sold (not that I would know but I would assume, based on Marlowe’s play, that soul selling is traditionally not a love transaction, Tinder and Grindr perhaps the exception). Faustus’s recklessness and passivity to the world’s demise speaks of deeper regret, a swan song of humanity’s lack of care while fish die, and bushfires destroy the world. We have sold Earth’s soul for our own pleasure. Hell on earth, indeed.
Lizzy Love’s Mephistopheles counterpoints Crowley’s obstinate refusal to hear her. Where Crowley is manic, Love is calm, always pulling the narrative back into romantic intent. While Crowley’s Faustus want to sell out who they are, when she refuses to consider a love match with the female demon, whose tender pleading goes unheard, we are confronted by a person obtuse to the nature of love, intimacy and romance. The introduction of the character Kit Marlowe as a past love interest shows specificity, which was previously lacking, and strengthens the structure, allowing the tone to have added depth. Brilliantly played by Love, she imbrues a nonchalant masculinity to charge the romantic tension, switching between light and dark tones, her body language all male as she languishes upon the chair, a docile Faustus at her feet.
Lovely to see the demon constantly confront Faustus. Always asking, always demanding, ‘You have to believe that things can change’, she never gives up. Yet Faustus is always ‘building triangles’, engaging others into her narrative, and avoiding investigation into her own attraction to Mephistopheles. The loving touches, the longing looks splinter off into The Text, both a reference to Marlowe’s play and humanity’s internal script, a description of the way it’s always been done, forever and ever. World without end.
So, let’s take a poll, shall we? Is this play worth seeing? The house was full (50 odd or more in the audience), the humour was sharp, and the acting more than made up for a few soft spots in the scenes. My vote from this review says – YES. Good job the lot of you (and please, next time make my job easier, and have all your names on the website, although very nice to meet you all!).
I Love You, Faustus plays at the Explosives Factory until the 11th of October.
