The Faustus Project
★★★★★ Fiendish
C alto (Venue 40): Thurs 1 – Sun 25 Aug 2024
Review by Katrina Dixon
Imaginative physicality, wry hi-jinks and a fiendish twist are a winning brew in Half Trick’s The Faustus Project, a romp through Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan drama, Doctor Faustus.
The combination is audacious and wonderfully silly fun, not least because each performance pivots around an unrehearsed Fringe performer cunningly inveigled to go through hell in the lead role of Faustus.
Courtney Bassett, Juliet Gentle. Pic: Andrew Morris
Tonight, that guest performer is Bella (Isabella Velarde), from forthcoming Fringe Show Malvolio’s Fantasy, adding witty ad-libs throughout that match the show’s pace and tone perfectly, and that also show she can give as good as she gets from the accomplished performers of the Edinburgh-based Kiwi theatre company.
With a guest lead performer who genuinely doesn’t know what the fates have in store here and a seasoned troupe directing Bella’s Faustus like suitably diabolical puppeteers, Luke Thornborough’s dynamic production grips from the start.
visions of good and evil
By turns playfully transgressive and nimble-witted throughout, this is a true collective that flows together and also seamlessly plays off each other and their guest performer.
Among them, co-director and performer Courtney Bassett is a brazenly powerful Helen of Troy and co-director and performer Caden Scott is a wry factotum of Lucifer and steward of damnation as Mephistopheles. James Jennifer Wright makes efficient use of key props in their bare bones set design to let the imagination of the troupe and audience run riot with visions of good and evil.
Caden Scott. Pic: Andrew Morris.
All this, and possibly the most amazing thing is that Half Trick does really use the original text of Marlowe’s play. Faustus is still an ambitious scholar who veers into the occult when traditional learning is not enough for him.
Caught between medieval theology and the intellectual wildness of the Renaissance, trading his soul leads Faustus to fame, fortune, magic and all kinds of lascivious pleasures.
It’s just that, in Half Trick’s version, the hell that Faustus creates for himself by trading his soul comes with acrobatics, simulated naughty coitus and custard pies. It’s a trick worthy of the devil – surely no one can resist.
Running Time: One hour (no interval)
C alto, (studio), 7 Victoria Terrace, above Victoria St, EH1 2JL (Venue 40)
Thursday 1 – Sunday 25 August 2024
Odd dates only: 10.30pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
Website: https://halftrick.com/
Instagram: @halftricktheatre
Facebook: @HalfTrickTheatre
ENDS
