The Faustus story gets updated for the easy credit eeasy fame generation in Catherine Harvey's first full length play, currently showing at the Old Red Lion Theatre. Phil (Daniel Simpson), a man facing debt to begin with, is seduced by the charms of Julie (Zazie Smuts), who he meets at a park bench while feeding the ducks, to kickstart a life where not only are his immediate debts wiped out but he can also have anything else he or his wife desires. The cost is high, as you would expect, but it is only when Phil is asked to pay the money back that he realises just how high, and how impossible his situation has become.
Whilst it could be seen as a fairly obvious analogy for the lure of easy money, Harvey and director Shani Erez deserve credit for avoiding cliches and the temptation to make money and fame seem sexy and powerful. Julie is not a femme fatale who can seduce a man just by looking at him, Smuts plays her as a streetwise urchin who would be more than at home in an updated Oliver Twist, and this gives her a more seedy allure that supports the Faustus story. Likewise the life of Phil and his wife Linda (Charlotte McKinney) barely changes as Phil acquires more wealth. Linda still obsesses over her plants, and they still stay in the same house with the same life except for a fake promotion and displays of disposable income. There is no magnificent transformation, and they don't gain that much for what they stand to lose, again supporting the theme of the play and the reality of what can be achieved with easy credit.
The play keeps you entertained even as the inevitable conclusion approaches, and the heat in the theatre does its best to destroy your interest in what is happening on stage, but there is nothing that comes as too much of a surprise. An opening reference to the story of Icarus re-emerges at the end and is suitably underplayed to reflect the gap between the illusion and the reality of Phil and Linda's situation, but it would have been good to see this story linked in elsewhere in the play. The cause of Phil's financial problems at the start of the play are never explained either. By having him already in trouble rather than just thwarted by ambition, his decision to succumb to Julie is less of a surprise, and the first part of the events that lead to his demise have been played out before we even see him.
Also as I write this review, I'm aware that I've got this far without even mentioning the character of Nan (Lesley Stone). Stone gives a good performance as Julie's rich nan who bankrolls Phil, but while she provides a narrative role, she doesn't add anything to the story, which questions the need for the part. A monologue scene where Simpson breaks the fourth wall addressing the audience after realising his dilemma and the unfair terms of the pact, could have been played out between Stone and Simpson and would have had a greater effect if it had been, but with this opportunity passed up on, the role feels more like a supporting device than something that is essential to the story.
That said, the play does succeed in re-setting the Faustus story as a tale for our times, and in showing the pact with the devil that was the national obsession with consumerism and feeding the desire to have all the latest must have items. The play runs to 9th June.
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