Performance Review

F@ust: Version 3.0

Figures

F@ust: Version 3.0. Based on Faust, Parts I and II, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, adapted by Pablo Ley. La Fura dels Baus, Barcelona. New York State Theatre. Lincoln Center Festival '98. 24 July 1998.

A dutiful respect for classical tradition is perhaps the last thing one would associate with the Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus. So it was hardly surprising that F@ust: Version 3.0, while representing a quantum leap towards the mainstream in both its relationship to the audience (which is seated for the first time) and its use of a narrative text, should nevertheless exhibit such a resolute rejection of theatrical convention.

"It has been necessary to translate [Goethe's Faust] into the scenic language characteristic of La Fura dels Baus," reads the program note. The group translated Goethe's "post-Renaissance elitist" into a forty-seven-year-old Catalan everyman trapped in cyberspace. The scenic language was a conglomerate of metal girders, nightclub chic, television, slasher movies, video games, Greek mythology, torture machinery, soft porn, and the Internet, much of it projected onto a large metal screen at the back of the stage whose eight panels occasionally opened to reveal live action behind. The projections were stunning and immaculately produced, ranging from lurid mutations of talking heads to landscapes, fiery vaults, and free-flowing blood. Sometimes it was easy to relate these images to the onstage drama; sometimes it was not. Through it all ran countless evocations of duality: of the real and projected self, of male and female, of a divided soul.

The projected images were in fact so powerful that the live actors were dwarfed by comparison. The text, a highly condensed version of the original by Pablo Ley, seems bent on making Goethe's subtext explicit, and the characters were for the most part reduced to symbolic ciphers. The first image was of Faust's lighted face (Santi Pons), spinning like some crazed atom in the darkness and spouting words of despair, and from that point on he rarely became more than a figure to be stripped, strapped onto spinning gurney-like contraptions, shown sexually-charged or violent events, and generally led by the nose by Mephistopheles (Miquel Gelabert) and his anonymous lackeys. The minor character/symbols came off better, as with the naked woman who glided out of the bottom of a bathtub (Anabel Moreno, who ably doubled as Marta), signifying Faust's awakening sensuality as he makes his blood pact. Least successful was Mephistopheles, who from the minute he appeared on stage was reduced to being little more than a mouthpiece when he told Faust: "I'm part of you. Your companion. Your shadow. Your flesh. I always have been . . . I am pleasure, destruction. I am part of the darkness which was all, from which you were born to the light which annihilates it."

This language of metaphor, metaphysics, and abstraction characterized the majority of the verbal exchanges. When it did not, the language was coarse, violent, or flippant, and only very occasionally funny or tender. The torrent of words and rapid-fire succession of images continued largely unabated for 100 unbroken minutes. The creators clearly relished the challenge of juxtaposing multimedia events with only oblique connections to each other in such a way that we might make those connections for ourselves with little prodding. The result was a virtually unsustainable tension between the potent images that greeted the eyes and the weighty blocks of words that fell on the ears. Faust's story was virtually lost in the intricate, highly conceptualized narrative framework.

Ultimately, F@ust: Version 3.0 did not only crave one's indulgence; it demanded it. Yet for those willing to indulge, there were rewards. One fruitful choice was to focus not on the mechanics of the Internet, but rather firmly on the other side of the cyberspace equation: that part of the mind which [End Page 511] hears inner voices and projects distorting fantasies onto worldly objects. From the very opening image of Faust's spinning head we are already outside of time and space, peering inside Faust's cybernetic soul. Even Margareta (Sara Rosa) seemed to be an extension of Faust's private cyberspace as she coupled with him suspended in a huge net, flailed around the stage on the end of a rope, and returned from the dead to usher Faust--who by then has already committed suicide twice and been reborn from a large plastic embryo suspended over the stage--to his final end.

Margareta at the same time was the most vividly realized character. Her multimedia portrayal breathed life into the obsessions of the voyeuristic Faust. Mephistopheles's magic reveals a variety of voyeuristic images: Margareta as murderess, lethally spiking her mother's wine; Margareta taking a shower simultaneously on stage and on video (the lower half of her video image morphing into a live drag queen); the freshly deflowered Margareta provocatively putting on lipstick like a model in a magazine ad (again both on stage and projected on the screen); Margareta running naked and scared; Margareta playing naughty nurse--images which were layered between a multitude of others in dazzling kinetic collages. And it was in her presence that we reached the visual epiphany of the evening: the lighted faces of Faust and Mephistopheles hovering over a doomed Margareta, staring down through a huge image of a bare-breasted woman in a state approaching spiritual ecstasy as she stroked a glowing, stylized phallus in slow motion against a stormy sky. [End Page 512]

As the music reached its crescendo over multiple images of Faust/Mephistopheles's spinning dual self, stagelights suddenly blazed up on the audience, and the performance was over. Perhaps Faust had exploded, or La Fura was telling us that his story was finished and it was time to get on with our own. Thus F@ust: Version 3.0 delivered multiple meanings, manic energy, visual sophistication, and a spirit of heady adventure by turns startling, maddening, funny, impenetrable, and fascinating.

Kit Baker
New York City

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