FAUST (FAUST)

The Oregonian, October 10, 2003
By Richard Wattenberg

Liminal’s always earnest ensemble takes on the Faust story in an intriguing theatrical production that is certainly not for everybody. Paradoxically combining spare minimalism with Gothic extravagance, this performance—part installation art, part movement piece and part oratorio—is sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes unfathomable and often lacking humanity. “Faust” is structured around a series of movement vignettes, each representing one episode in Faust ‘s life. Played by three performers using a muscular physical idiom, each vignette is associated with one of the cardinal points of the large central performance space. East is “Thirst for Knowledge,” and here we see an impatient Faust being tempted by two demons. South, “Faust Signs an Agreement,” represents the doctor’s acceptance of the devil’s compact as an eerie black mass. On the west side of the space, “Gretchen’s Seduction,” a tragic and erotic episode, is rendered. To the north, “Mephistopheles Takes What Finally Belongs to Him” focuses on Faust’s death. The vignettes, played and replayed, follow one another in a seemingly random sequence. Nevertheless, the repeated movements within each vignette as well as their iteration of the vignettes suggest a predetermined, freedomless world and, consequently, the horrible inevitability of Faust’s fate.