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Doctor Faustus

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow 

Four stars 

 

The clock is ticking for the good doctor of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy of self-destruction, brought to life for this year’s Bard in the Botanics season, tellingly titled Magic – mayhem – and murder.  Jennifer Dick’s three-actor version was first performed in the Kibble Palace back in 2016. Her revisitation is as much a trip into the perils of fantasy wish fulfilment as it was before in an even tauter eighty minutes that sees Faustus throw himself into a tug of love between the two extremes that seem to offer him a lifeline. 

 

Having reached the pinnacle of his profession only to lose his mojo, Faustus’s desires go way beyond the appliance of science. As if by magic, Mephistopheles appears to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Only the Good Angel hanging on his shoulder is standing in his way.

 

As in Dick’s original production, Faustus is embodied by a returning Adam Donaldson as a frustrated academic who conjures up what initially appears to be the answer to all he ever wanted. Of course, as Sam Stopford’s devil in disguise works his alchemy, things don’t quite work out as Faustus might have expected, even with Rebecca Robin’s beatific Good Angel acting as good cop to Mephistopheles’ sly old trickster. 

 

Clad here in surgeon’s scrubs, Donaldson’s Faustus paces Heather Grace Currie’s set of books, boxes and a very telling toy theatre with desperate intent. While Faustus’s adventures are a matter of life and death, for Mephistopheles it’s all a game. However serious Stopford’s pasty-faced conjurer plays it, the result is an almighty battle between good and evil that nobody can win.


The Herald, June 30th 2025

 

ends  

 

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