The Year of Fat Pigs and Idiots
Favorite plays of 2009.
Rachel Swan
December 23, 2009
East Bay Express

1. Faust: Part 1, Shotgun Players. Few characters are more difficult to depict than German professor Heinrich Faust: wonk, Renaissance man, herbalist, theologian, manic-depressive, magician, and serial switcher of allegiances. But Mark Jackson played himwith alacrity inFaust: Part 1, his own Gothic adaptation of Goethe's 19th-century drama about a man who dealt with the devil. Jackson wrote, directed, and starred in this thoroughly compelling play, with Peter Ruocco costarring as the canny devil Mephistopheles, and beautiful Blythe Foster playing Gretchen, the peasant girl who becomes Faust's love interest. It's a play about love, sex, and desire that turns into conquest, wherein no relationship is inured to the devil's power games. Gretchen's quaint German folk songs (taken from the original play) and Nina Ball's birch-tree sets lent authenticity to this production.

[ back to reviews ]