Faust Part II

Sometimes it pays to be just a little bit obsessive-compulsive. I rumbled that returns were appearing occasionally on the National Theatre website, and after much hitting of refresh I scored another trip to Hell.

The second part of Goethe’s Faust is very different to the first – would my second trip to Wapping be so different? Well, in some ways, yes, and it was remarkable how many different scenes, or angles, I kept discovering – even after close to 6 hours inside this world I was finding new rooms and characters – but what the second visit shared with the first was the same extraordinary intensity. After two visits in three days, I felt like something had snapped in my brain, and I’m still not entirely sure I’ve recovered.

Early on in visit number two I found myself in a small room, alone with a woman knitting fishing nets. I was used to being close to, and yet invisible to, the actors, but, very slowly, she turned her face towards me, and started to tell me about the little boy who went to the moon. I think at some point she locked the door. The little boy didn’t like the moon so he went to the sun. Without seeming to, by some psychology trickery, she choreographed me into the position where I was backing up against a little built-in bench, which she pushed me down onto, and pinned me down. When the little boy got to the sun he yearned to go back to the earth. She took my mask off, and was holding my face. But the little boy realised the earth was just an upturned plant-pot. The woman said that when she first saw me she thought I was that little boy. She must have felt through my clothes how hard my heart was beating. Disempowered by the removal of my mask I could just about muster the neurological signals necessary to shake my head. Speaking was out of the question. She pulled out a little wooden box and opened it. She kissed me my face, and rubbed lavender oil around my mouth. She gave me a sweet, and begged me to be careful, then took my hand and led me out of the room. I wanted to thank her but was still unable to speak.

At various points later in the evening, as Mephistopheles and his dark witches brought chaos and terror, I would catch the smell of lavender and remember her plea.

Whatever game plan I may have had for the evening was out of the window, and, freed from worrying about catching the main scenes (as I had seen them first time around around) I was able to go with the flow a lot more. Sometimes I was minded of the scene in The Truman Show when Truman is sailing his boat and crashes into the horizon coloured wall- I felt I was close to the edges of the world but could never quite break out.

I found myself shadowing Gretchen (Sarah Labigne) for part of the evening and found in her performance real emotional depth in her transformation from innocent playful girl to the heartbreaking scene in the pine forests where her brother dies, and she inflicts an abortion on herself by running repeatedly into a wall. Such is the suspension of disbelief that it actually entered my head that I wanted to, that I should, stop her. You don’t get that sitting rattling your bangles behind the “fourth wall”.

Other memorable sequences included a terrific scene in the cinema where Mephistopheles and a flame haired girl were dancing in between the seats and the people trying to watch a Touch of Evil on the screen – legs, popcorn, hair, everything was flying, before the couple burst through a door I hadn’t noticed before and I realised that I had seen the end of this scene from a different angle. Another lovely moment was when I was having a crafty sip of water on the stairs and one of the “witches” came by and gave me a sneaky, ambiguous smile. I followed her (as you do) into a wonderful scene in a dingy bar where she danced along the bar top before lip synching Lynch style to a fifties heartbreaker, on a little stage, her face starkly lit. All the while one of the male actors was crying in the corner. As I watched him, he transformed from one character into another – all he seemed to do was remove his wig, yet his whole physiognomy and posture changed.

Behind the bar was the devil’s parlour chamber, where the original wager over Faust’s soul was made – red velvet curtains, a stuffed fox, a locked safe, and on the table, like a children’s game, was a floor plan with little figurines for each of the major characters. Such amazing attention to detail.

Oh yeah, and I got chased out of the beauty parlour by an angry beautician but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Anyway it's definitely finished now.

Would I have gone back again if I could have? You bet!