Seabass Theatre has carved out a niche for itself producing original takes on canonical texts, most memorably last year’s plant-inspired Hamlet staged at the former Music Faculty. When discussing their interests as a production company, Director Seb Carrington says: “Part of our ethos is presenting works that centre around one or two very psychologically complex characters.” Describing their approach, Carrington goes on to state a preference for contemporary aesthetics, explaining that for her this “strip[s] everything away that is restrictive to time or place and strip[s] away things that may be unnecessary to putting forwards a very impactful psychological take, while still offering something interesting interpretation-wise.” Audiences should certainly expect an original take on Faustus and one which the entire creative team is clearly united behind.
Last week I met online with the director (Seb Carrington), the composer (Lucian Ng) and the actress playing the Good Angel (Amber Meeson) to discuss their thoughts about the production. It was immediately clear that they have a strong vision for the play, controversial as it may be for readers who find Faustus at least a partially sympathetic character: “We are interpreting the character of Faustus as a distinctly fascist character. The word omnipotence in the first soliloquy really struck us as the deciding factor of what this production is all about: his kind of quest seeking for infinite power, infinite money, physical/sexual gratification, everything that comes into what does the fascist mindset do.” Carrington is very clear about how she considers the text to be particularly relevant to the present moment, citing the rise of people like Trump and the Tate brothers in the United States: “It is terrifying how much of the play draws an almost direct parallel to current events such as the climbing of the social ladder and the weaponisation of moral things in a very selfish way.”
You may be thinking: what does this actually mean for the performance? Many OUDS shows start off with daring ideas that end up translating poorly onstage, but the team clearly broke down how their conceptual concerns would be communicated onstage. Carrington certainly comes off as a strong leader, with a cast and crew clearly dedicated to bringing their ideas to life.
Although the set designer was not on the call, Carrington briefly described what seemed to be an interesting set-up: “There’s two projectors we are using that are constantly changing the landscape of the play aesthetically with words that snake in and out of the scene or different graphics, different colours. There’s different stage effects with blood and liquids that get thrown around the floor and cleaned up, etc. Everything is constantly emotion.” Beyond the visual effects, the set – I am told – will be very minimal consisting of a white sheet and altar. Carrington explains that this makes lighting and sound crucial in the production to evoke “what the situation is” along with the acting.
Like a lot of bigger venue OUDS shows recently, Doctor Faustus boasts an original score composed by sound designer, Lucian Ng. In explaining the choice to have an original score, Carrington emphasises that the play is written in verse which “itself has a very musical quality” and that the events of the play themselves lend themselves to musical accompaniment. The score is sprinkled throughout and will not accompany the entirety of the action. Ng points out that the play is “inherently very religious” and that a lot of the music that he has written is “liturgical music that is based around plain chant”. He is using “the original plain song melodies” but warping or corrupting them by the way that they are harmonised, drawing on “atonality”. Seabass Theatre has a live choir which will sing “arrangements of plain song melodies” at different points of the show. Carrington explains that “the play as originally conceived by Marlowe was about Catholicism versus Protestantism and Marlowe [was] taking a cynical, agnostic point of view criticising both sides” and so the melodies chosen will relate to the events happening onstage. They explain that “melodies of the Church decay” along with the decay of the space of the play.
As for wider questions of sound design, I am told that all of the actor’s voices will be amplified in order to “explore the full range of the actor’s voices”. Ng explains that “the sound world of the play is a lot more than the original score”. He describes the sound design as intense, using lots of drones and found sounds to “underscore tension on a really subtle level, in the sense that you have something playing at a really low level and it slowly rises and you only realise it’s there maybe five minutes after it’s started playing.” Ng argues that sound design in OUDS is often reduced to single sound effects like shots or door slammings but for him “sound is so important to how you can cultivate a world”.
When looking up information about the show on the Seabass Theatre page before the interview, I noticed a long list of trigger warnings as well as a recommended minimum viewing age. Similarly, crew calls mentioned pails of fake blood. My memory of Doctor Faustus, from reading it years ago, contained more psychological horror than body horror, but a quick search revealed that recent productions of the play seem to lean into gore, especially for the finale. Student shows have a tendency to avoid using fake blood or attempting realistic depictions of violence because of how hard it is to pull it off convincingly so I was curious why this decision had been made here. Carrington explained: “The use of violence as a dramatic technique is incredibly helpful and pertinent, especially for something like this where we’re tapping into the theatrical extremities of the subconscious. You get the invasive thoughts, the subconscious thoughts that lead to this and we are essentially putting those thoughts onto the stage.”
Carrington acknowledged that this is a tough line to walk, the danger of veering into gratuitousness being ever present, but she reassured Cherwell that this wasn’t being “edgy for edgy’s sake”. The director argued that being graphic about the violence is crucial in “situations where we talk about violence that is deeply rooted in misogyny”, hinting at a finale which involves the culmination “in a very horrible and twisted way” of the relationship between Faustus and the Good Angel. Carrington explains: “In this way, it does not strike itself as gratuitous, it strikes itself as an incredibly necessary conversation to be having about the impacts of fascism, about the impacts of this mindset on people who are victims.” She explained that about 90% of the crew is made up of women, non-binary, queer people, and global minorities and so that the show really comes “from a place of rage”.
Carrington had described the Good Angel as a “symbol of female rage” and later told us that she is the only “female-presenting figure in the show”. I asked Amber Meeson how this impacted her performance and she explained that eventually they came to the decision to play the Good Angel as a maternal figure: “It was difficult to tow the line between having this divine figure and also having this figure who all that she wants to do is make sure that Faustus repents and goes to heaven. But there still needs to be some detachment from him in that it has to be his decision, she can’t physically influence him and so, this maternal tone was quite helpful.” She said that playing the Good Angel as a maternal, made it easier to understand how Faustus views her as someone that “he doesn’t really need to listen to”.
After a 30 minute conversation with the three, it is clear that Seabass Theatre’s production is incredibly ambitious and that a lot of work and thought has been put into bringing this vision to life. You have enough descriptions, it is time for Cherwell readers to go and find out what the show looks like!
You can watch Doctor Faustus at the Keble O’Reilly from 26th-29th November.
