Half-Baked

“Faust”
Maribor Slovene National Theatre
Forum Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg, Germany
March 16, 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

Goethe’s Faust: The Tragedy’s First Part wasn’t on Edward Clug’s agenda when choreographing a new piece for the Zurich Ballet in 2018. He wanted to tackle Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, but upon finding out that Zurich’s audience wasn’t familiar with the so-called “Soviet Faust,” he turned to his German representative. After its Zurich premiere, Clug’s Faust entered the repertory of other ballet companies, among them Clug’s home company in Maribor, Slovenia. Last weekend, this company performed the piece on their tour to Ludwigsburg.

Fate decided that Clug would indeed later adapt Master and Margarita for the ballet stage, but it was the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow where it premiered in 2021. Faust is a journeyman’s piece whereas Master and Margarita by comparison counts as a masterpiece. Faust assembles plenty of dance theater with group sequences, some of which are trenchant, while others are less convincing. At times, its acrid wit is close to horror. Although the ingredients are fine overall, they didn’t merge as a whole.

Clug’s Dr. Faust (Davide Buffone) shuffled dejectedly under a sky that displayed a celestial inferno to illustrate his mental state. The wheelchair he pushed along was heavily packed with books. He was Magister—yea, Doctor—hight. And here – poor fool! – with all his lore he stood no wiser than before. That’s why the dark angels hidden in Faust’s mind flexed their muscles without restraint, deepening his gloom. He was about to commit suicide (although hanging oneself with a tie is hardly a serious attempt) but was saved by a white angel (Tijuana Križman Hudernik). Dropping half-dead in his wheelchair, Faust continued to pen books that a horde of boorish students pried out of his hands, simulating thirst for knowledge. Hidden from the public eye, he pursued his medical activity – or machination – as the corpse he examined and tried to reanimate had a striking resemblance to Jesus. This Jesus figure (Luka Pitamic) was successfully resurrected not by Faust but by Thomas Martino’s mordant Mephisto and shoved on stage in a huge fume-filled plexiglass incubator. He looked like a living icon in a shrine filled with befogging incense. The versatile plexiglass box (set design by Marko Japeli) later served as a trap for Faust (the smoke must have been choking at this point) and as a cold and damp lock-up for the confused Gretchen (Monja Obrul).

The crucial line was crossed the moment Faust fancied himself a Jesus-like martyr and – as if suffering from tunnel vision – stepped into the incubator. The mirage of Jesus vanished instantly, and Faust was lost to the devil. A cute poodle (made from a black modeling balloon) offered consolation, but it quickly burst under Mephisto’s tough grip. Satan had a myriad of tricks at hand to put the screws on his prey and suck his blood to sign their pact. Especially effective was the incubator (which, on this occasion, was used as a compressor box) and the witches’ kitchen of Sybille (Evgenija Koškina) where Faust slid in and out of hell’s oven like a loaf of bread, returning bandaged first, then as Venus, and finally as his rejuvenated self. The screeching caused by Mephisto’s underlings, whose long knives pounded on a metallic slaughtering block, their blades scratching patterns into the surface, made my blood run cold but didn’t bother Faust. Being full of sap and lust again his sensuality ran free in a pas de deux with Mephisto.

Faust’s desire found its object when he met Gretchen. The hard-working girl picked up the empty beer bottles left by a sottish party mob (either students in Auerbach’s Cellar or Easter-celebrating youth), whose shorts and suspenders reminded me of Oktoberfest bingers (costumes by Leo Kulaš). While scrubbing tables, she ran into Faust. He soon acted out his fantasies of what to do with a young woman in Gretchen’s bed chamber. His female surrogate was the bed frame which he fondled with abandon. Faust’s first bait – a pearl necklace presented by an anonymous hand on the left – was examined by Gretchen at length and then swiftly handed to the clergy’s invisible hand on the right.
Thanks to Gretchen’s neighbor, Marthe (Olesja Hartmann Marin), the second pearl necklace took Faust to his goal. Marthe arranged a double rendezvous in which not only “two souls alas! were dwelling in my breast,” but these souls also shared the same togs. The secret meeting was shrouded by silence. Only a bird chirped from afar (music by Milko Lazar). Gretchen and Faust almost managed to sneak away for a private tête-à-tête and would have succeeded if Mephisto hadn’t been on the ball. He made the laws of the game, and hence, the couple’s romantic intermezzo in the corn field was meant to be short – and fateful.

Nine months later, Gretchen took her newborn for a walk in the pram. Her pregnancy passed in a flash, as Mephisto distracted his victims with a war movie and popcorn. On and off screen merged when Gretchen’s brother Valentin (Ionut Dinita), who had just slaughtered his opponents in a heroic samurai manner, challenged Faust to a duel to avenge Gretchen’s seduction. Confronted with the mighty Valentin, Faust was a pansy. His virility fading, he struggled to keep the long sword up but somehow managed to smite Valentin. Valentin died just before his vengeful blade slit Gretchen’s throat. She tried to kill herself, but submerging her head in a bucket of water wasn’t effective. Poured into the pram, the water at least drowned her baby. Despite all, a huge organ under a turbulent sky heralded Gretchen’s salvation, though she was escorted to the dungeon for a time.

The ballet should have ended there. Everything that followed to stay true to Goethe was an appendix. The Walpurgis Night was a lengthy costume show during which Faust was predictably manhandled. Some kisses of death, electroshock-like convulsions, and failed rescue attempts later, Mephisto was the only resort left for Faust.

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