All bark and no bite, risky but predicatable
A musical spiral into madness as an PhD student makes a deal with the devil for ground academic success, sounds like a chaotic, exciting and horrifying examination of academic pressures wrapped up in a morality play. Chaotic, it was.
Faustine is performed by one women – it does alternate between Lydia Brinkmann and Sarah Norcross but Lydia took the star role for the night. One person plays place all the focus on one actor for better or worse, when this works it’s because Lydia is great at physical acting. She contorts her body as if a puppet held aloft by some demonic presence, and makes these other-worldly faces during moments of madness as a hellish red light illuminates her face against the black stage. Even Lydia just crushing a tomato in her jaw, strongly enough to pepper the crowd with juice gives a menacing aura to the stage. These highs are contrasted by the almost entirely tensionless plot.
The script and dialogue aren’t compelling in this descent into madness. I felt little empathy for her despite me wanting to, there was little emotional purchase that lets you buy into why academic pressure is so bad she’d sell her soul for a dissertation. This issue persists into plot beats that try and make you feel empathy for cut out characters and hastily set up up conflicts. I was left starving for real meat and bones throughout the story, anything emotionally deep to chew on.
The drama’s high point, was the series of phone messages Faustine’s mother leaves her. Her last one voices her horror and pleading at what Faustine has become, pleading for her real daughter to find herself. Faustine for the first time tries to dial back and find she’s blocked, and for a rare moment considers the tragedy she’s set in motion. The songs felt very redundant, not being praiseworthy in themself or what little they add to the enjoyment of the play. I really want to like the play, I think the synopsis sounds really interesting, but it’s a shame it doesn’t live up to it and it’s not even the riskier portions that really ruin it. If anything more risk in storytelling and presentation (and the superb body horror) would make it more compelling instead of a predictable, show with the aesthetics of something much better.
Faustine is at 21:35pm at theSpace@Surgeon’s hall every day until the 9th August