Photo credit: Christian Kelley.
Presented by the Cunning Folk Theatre
Adapted by Catherine Alam-Nist from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Urfaust
Directed by Catherine Alam-Nis
Stage Managed by Aaron Mesa
Lighting, Projection, and Sound Design by Catherine Alam-Nist
Costume and Prop Design by Zel Tracey
Featuring: David J. Kim, Mari Elliot, Emma Weller
August 23-25
Boston Center for the Arts
Boston, MA
Information here
Critique by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood
BOSTON — The Cunning Folk is a new theatre company interested in old stories: myths, legends, and fairy tales that at once fascinate and disturb, told anew through the adaptive craft of live performance. So far, they have produced Selkie Play, an exploration of Irish mythology by Kara O’Rourke, Measure for Measure, arguably Shakespeare’s thorniest problem play, and now A Neufaust, a new adaptation of the classic Enlightenment play.
This version, adapted and directed by artistic director Catherine Alam-Nist, is a riff on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Urfaust: an early draft of Faust: Part One. Audiences (including myself) are likely more familiar with Goethe’s later version, but most of the basic plot beats are still there: the demon Mephistopheles tempts Faust – a brilliant, learned, and ultimately mortal man – with worldly pleasures, namely the beautiful and innocent Gretchen. Tragedy ensues.
This version of the story is missing the two central wagers. The first is between God and Mephistopheles: God bets that the demon can’t lure the righteous Faust into a life of sin. The second is between Faust and Mephistopheles: the demon promises Faust a moment of earthly transcendence in exchange for his mortal soul and subsequently damns him to Hell. (In A Neufast, this latter wager is alluded to, but the stakes are unclear.) I’m not familiar enough with Urfaust to speculate on what these omissions mean from a literary perspective, but from a dramatic, character-oriented perspective, it was frustrating. In A Neufaust, there are no clear motives for Faust and Mephistopheles’ (in this version, Mephisto’s (played by Emma Weller) decisions, resulting in a series of actions that appear meaninglessly foolish and cruel. I appreciate Alam-Nist’s desire to honor the source material, but I craved more radical, character-driven choices to the structure than were made in this production.
Alam-Nist transposes the story into the setting of a 21st-century liberal arts college: Faust (David J. Kim) is a bumbling, intellectually and romantically unsatisfied literature professor. Gretchen (Mari Elliot) is his religiously devout, romantically naive student. Faust’s desire to possess Gretchen (already unsettling in the source material) takes on particularly disturbing overtones with this adaptive choice. This professor-student relationship is difficult to watch: Faust jokes about how few of his references young Gretchen understands, spikes her coffee with alcohol, and seduces her despite her religious objections.
The Cunning Folk’s mission statement and this play’s program note express an interest in telling stories about characters with marginalized genders, but any feminist writing choices in this adaptation are overshadowed by the sheer ick factor of watching Faust abuse his position of power as Gretchen’s more mature, tenured professor for 60 minutes straight.
Neither the text nor Kim’s performance indicate that Faust is anything but oblivious to the harm that he is causing, resulting in a protagonist whom I found to be utterly unsympathetic. I appreciate stories about problematic people, and I suspect that Alam-Nist is intentionally exploring 21st-century ethical concerns with this adaptive choice, but Faust was so irredeemable that I struggled to stay engaged in his story.
Granted, this production does attempt to center two women: Gretchen, of course, but also a gender-swapped Mephisto. Gretchen still comes across as a tragic ingenue, despite attempts to give her more depth. Mephisto is fun to watch (thanks to a devious performance by Emma Weller) but has little narrative specificity to sink her teeth into between her various indistinct alter egos and the text’s overall lack of character motivation.
Alam-Nist demonstrates a clear passion for linguistic wit. Much of the play, like its source material, is written in verse, showing off a command of rhythm and artistry. Early moments are rooted in present-day vernacular with slang and swearing. Then, the text becomes increasingly antiquated. This may be an intentional attempt to make the play feel timeless as costumes and other design elements also become less contemporary towards the end of the play, but it also cuts the adaptation off from a sense of time and place, ultimately begging the question of why the play needed to be transposed at all.
Photo credit: Christian Kelley
The production is bare-bones. It relies on two rolling office chairs used like rehearsal cubes, a projection screen to establish scene locations, and some scattered props as set dressing. This onstage world looks small as if it’s drowning in the middle of the echo-y and otherwise empty BCA. This puts an immense onus on the performers to bring the story to life and fill the space with their presence and voices, but the staging often falls flat. There are some compelling moments, such as a pantomimed romance montage between Faust and Gretchen, but the staging overall feels like it emerged from a desire to make the production look interesting, rather than from character-driven storytelling. The result is a series of abrupt character interactions, rather than a cohesive visual narrative.
Ultimately, this production struggles to answer the question central to any adaptive project: why this story now? The updated setting and relationship dynamics create space for potential conversations about gender, power, and abuse, but these changes are superficial on their own. The play needs to make bolder adaptational choices with structure, character motivation, and world-building to justify the setting transposition.
Alam-Nist, a student at Harvard Divinity School, knows her dramaturgical stuff when it comes to the historical and theological underpinnings of this Enlightenment drama, and I imagine that this play would flourish with an intensive workshop process. I hope that she and her artistic team find opportunities to keep playing with these devilishly promising ideas.
