Faustus: A Play

by David Mamet

Having put his personal stamp on the contemporary theater, David Mamet now performs the supremely audacious feat of reinventing the theater of the past. He does so by telling his own ingenious and eerily moving version of the tragedy of Dr. Faustus.

Mamet’s Faustus—like Marlowe’s and Goethe’s before him—is a philosopher whose life’s work has been the pursuit of “the secret engine of the world.” He is also the distracted father of a small, adoring son. Out of the clash between love and intellect and the fatal operation of Faustus’ pride, Mamet fashions a work that is at once caustic and heart-wrenching and whose resplendent language marries metaphysics to conman’s patter. A meditation on reason and folly, fathers and sons, and a breathtaking display of magic both literal and theatrical, Faustus is a triumph.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, 21st Century, Fiction

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.

As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.

Reviews

[Dimitris Passas (TapTheLine) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And you transfigured from our brave savant, into a missish postulate who wished to know: the weight of the world, the run of time, the final construction of matter... as the poor fool who wished to understand grief. Your wish has been granted"

O David Mamet επιτυγχάνει σε ένα εξαιρετικά ριψοκίνδυνο συγγραφικό πείραμα, καθώς επιλέγει να αναμετρηθεί με ένα θρυλικό έργο, του οποίου η διαχρονική λάμψη εκπορεύεται από δύο "ιερά τέρατα" της δυτικής λογοτεχνίας και σκέψης, τον Κρίστοφερ Μάρλοου πρώτα (1587) και τον Γ.Β. Γκαίτε περίπου δύο αίωνες αργότερα. Το κλασικό αυτό έργο, του οποίου ο κεντρικός χαρακτήρας είναι βασισμένος σε πραγματικό ιστορικό πρόσωπο ονόματι Johan Georg Faust, είναι αποτυπωμένο στο νου και τις αισθήσεις σχεδόν όλων των φιλοτέχνων στον δυτικό κόσμο και η κεντρική του ιστορία αποτελεί μέχρι και σήμερα, όπως θα εξακολουθεί να αποτελεί και στο μέλλον, πηγή έμπνευσης για πάμπολλες σύγχρονες διασκευές και προσαρμογές με τις οποίες πειραματίζονται νέοι, κυρίως θεατρικοί, συγγραφείς. Ο Mamet φαίνεται να έχει προσεγγίσει τον "Φάουστ" με σεβασμό απέναντι στα κείμενα των Γκαίτε και Μάρλοου, χωρίς να καταλήγει να κάνει μια απλή αντιγραφή και, ως αποτέλεσμα, το "Faustus", παρά τα εμβριθή νοήματα με τα οποία καταπιάνεται, διαβάζεται μονορούφι, καθώς η ποιότητα των διαλόγων αντανακλά την συγγραφική επιδεξιότητα του Mamet, ενώ η εμπειρία της ανάγνωσης προσφέρει γνήσια συγκίνηση στον αναγνώστη που μαρτυρεί την τραγική μοίρα του Faustus, μέχρι και την καταστροφή του. Δεν κάνω περισσότερα σχόλια αναφορικά με τα πάμπολλα και ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέροντα ζητήματα που εγείρονται εντός του κειμένου, αφού είναι βέβαιο ότι ο καθένας θα προβεί στις υποκειμενικές του ερμηνείες και προσεγγίσεις. Το "Faustus" αξίζει να διαβαστεί τόσο από τους γνώστες του έργου όσο και από αυτούς που θα επιχειρήσουν για πρώτη φορά να μυηθούν σε αυτό τον θρύλο, μέσα από το θεατρικό δίπρακτο του Mamet.
5/5 χωρίς επιφύλαξη, ένα βιβλίο για όλους.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ya know what? I'm not gonna write a review. If Mamet can't show up to write this play, I ain't a'gonna show up to review it.

[David]

In many ways, this is typical Mamet and apparently authentic Faustus--though the two, perhaps, do not automatically come to mind together. It is, undeniably, a worthy participant after Marlowe and Goethe.

[E7boehm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good play on the orginal Faustus. It uses the tricks that Mamet loves. It has a hidden unread book, an idea that we sort of understand and imagine its implcations.
Faustus makes his choices and has the same aims as the orginal Fautus but Mamet looks at the implciation of choice and decision for Faust in a new way. I really like the magic and staging idea in the play, the idea that magic may be real or a trick in the play and never clear which one for great swaths of the play make it suspenseful.

Mamet is a great writer of dialog and this does not disappoint. He uses our imagination and gives us just what we need to see with our own minds.

Mamet showes that the tragdey of Faust is self inflicted and that Faust is aware of it.

[Tom McInnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mamet turns the gun on himself.

[Cyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

(World premiere 2/28/2004 at The Magic Theatre, San Francisco.) This is a strange update on the classic Dr. Faustus story...one I'm not sure I'll fully appreciate until/unless I reread Marlowe's version. Mamet's Faustus seems less aware than Marlowe's. In the end he seems to both win and lose--he loses his family but claims victory over Magus. I'm not sure I entirely understood what happened. I need to read it again, if I can stand all the weird and grammatically incorrect commas that drove me nuts. I realize Mamet uses them to pace the characters' speech, but they often caused me to have to go back and reread to try to discern what each comma was doing.

[Jill Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea. I get the message about being grateful for what you have and not taking anything or anyone for granted. I feel like it could have been more entertaining and less tedious with the dialogue.

[M.C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was just not for me, especially because I picked up the book thinking it was the actual Dr.Faustus play

[Edward Cheer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was honestly a surprise to me. I've never been that involved with David Mamet's works, but I stumbled across Faustus in my library and decided "what the hell? I've got time to read an extra play," and I'm honestly glad I did.

You probably already know I don't like Doctor Faustus by Marlowe, which is strange, because it's got a pretty big reputation as one of the greatest plays but I felt like the plot didn't go anywhere in the later acts of the play. Faustus by Mamet is much more different. It's an intelligent and surreal look at our quest for knowledge and how we can let our pride limit our view of the world and forget the most important things in life. It's not like Doctor Faustus or the silent film Faust that look at the concept of ultimate power at the expense of eternal damnation. Faustus is more of an inside look at the man himself.

Faustus is an intelligent man that strives for renown but ends up making some pretty sh***y decisions as the play goes on, as is expected with the source material. The dialogue is very intellectual and heightened which can probably lead to what I think is an intentional divide between your average audience member and the characters onstage. It's a very clever choice Mamet did with the dialogue and I certainly appreciate.

I had some problems with the sudden appearance of the Magus and the sloppy ham-handed finale of the play, but beyond that this is one of the better renditions of the old German folk legend. Is it as good as Faust? Not quite, but I like it enough to warrant a recommendation.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sold on this play in the early stages because the dialogue seemed a bit odd--I mean, a modern playwright is not necessarily a master of quais-renaissance dialogue. But by about 1/3 of the way through the play was really reaching me. One innovation to the Faust legend as I know it (that is, through Marlowe, not Goethe) is the creation of a Faustus family, whom Faustus gets damned to hell because he (is tricked into) swearing a false oath. In Marlowe's play, Faustus sells his own soul, which I think is the pretty standard rendering, but Mamet implicates not just Faustus himself, but his family primarily. Plus, Faustus has almost no redemptive qualities in Mamet's play, whereas he is something of a hero (albiet a very flawed one) for Marlowe. Everytime we think that Faustus is going to do the right thing he gets distracted or decides that the needs of others are less important than his own intellectual and occult curiosity. Also, this is one of the few good modern plays I've come across using very traditional (i.e., Aristotelian) tragic components.

[Bettie · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Raspberry for sure....



Sunday 27 March 2005 20:10-21:30 (Radio 3)


British Premiere of David Mamet's new play Faustus. In a timeless setting Mamet directs his own working of the Faustian legend.

Neglectful of his son on his birthday, Faustus is drawn into a deadly wager with the party 'entertainer' in which logic and reason are shown to be feeble weapons against the power of chance, mystery and magic. Will intellectual pride precede the ultimate fall of man?

Faustus ......... .Ed O'Neill
The Friend ....... Ed Begley Jr
The Magus ........ Ricky Jay
Faustus? Wife .... Rebecca Pidgeon
The Child ........ C Mamet

[Katie Farris · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I'm not a playwright, or much of a reader of plays. I grabbed this because I enjoyed "Oleanna," and was curious about the story of Faustus. I don't know how this play was received, but I do know I found it completely brilliant. The language felt archaic, but still fresh, to wit: "Who am I to balk another of his freak? I knew a villain, said he lived to count the stars. Each darkness found him, with his pen and ledger, out of the house, happy as a grig." The structure is lovely: the two acts echo one another to devastating effect, as the past comes back to haunt Faustus.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

A contemporary retelling of the Faustus story from David Mamet, without his signature language. While overwritten and pretentious, the play ended up gripping me in its story, mainly for the portrait of the devil as a common magician/illusionist. The BBC put together a first-rate audio play, which you can download from their website.

[amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

one of those things you finish reading and think well there is time i'll never get back.