It’s one of the most famous tales of a bad boyfriend in Western literature—a lonely scholar called Faust makes a deal with the devil and drags everyone else down with him—but in Sara Holdren’s new production for Heartbeat Opera, the focus shifts to the women in Faust’s wake. When we meet the titular character in Gounod’s opera, he’s ready to end it all with a poison cocktail. Loneliness and age have gotten the better of him, and he calls out for the devil. Only this time, the devil actually appears.
Everyone watching knows that Faust is about to make a very bad bargain: one that will lead to an eternity of suffering for him “down below” after a brief period of Satan serving him up above. But as bad as it seems for Dr. Faust, one only has to imagine how much worse it is for his lover Marguerite—seduced, abandoned after giving birth to a possibly demonic child, sentenced to death for drowning that child. If anyone needs a do-over at youth and innocence, it’s her. She didn’t make this deal.
Holdren’s production takes this seriously at least, but also works hard to find the humor in the situation. Gounod’s music is so blushingly romantic that the darkness at the heart of the story is easier to overlook than might be expected—after all, Faust’s deal with the devil causes the deaths of Marguerite, her brother Valentin and his own child. Holdren’s production, which includes new English dialogue, makes this contrast even more jarring. Played on a minimal rotating black-and-white stage by Yichen Zhou and Forest Entsminger, Holdren’s Faust is as much a comedy as a tragedy; it’s full of modern idioms and contemporary references, ad libs and physical jokes—especially for Marguerite’s neighbor Martha, who is played as a horny middle-aged broad, full of dirty jokes and terms of endearment. Two puppeteers (Rowan Magee and Emma Wiseman) provide both the magic and much of the production’s dynamism; particularly fun was the introduction to Mephistopheles, who appears waving a few too many red leather-clad arms from behind Faust’s bookshelf. Elsewhere, they hold flashlights up to characters’ faces, casting them in silhouette.
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Sara Holdren casts Faust as a battle between shadow and light—a motif she also takes literally. This production is full of ideas: shadow puppetry, scrim silhouettes, puppet shows and an ill-advised silent film sequence in the final stretch. Some of them work: Faust and Marguerite’s love duet staged largely via silhouette was an interesting way to ironize the “romance” at the heart of the opera, and the choreography made for a dynamic physical progression, but taken together, the emotional heft of the story gets lost in the shadows. Holdren has a fine eye for the comedic, but this very skill works against her later in the opera, as the stakes feel at first muted and then suddenly, laughably, too high.
The two largest roles in the show were also the most subdued performances. Tenor Orson Van Gay II has a pleasing timbre as Faust, but his voice and presence were simply not sizable enough for the role, causing him to recede even with the cut-down orchestra. Similarly, John Taylor Ward made for a surprisingly low-key Mephistopheles despite looking dashing in his devil’s outfits. His baritone is lighter and sprightlier than most, lending him playfulness without much threat to underscore it.
Other singers fared much better. Rachel Kobernick’s Marguerite had a welcome blend of power and sweetness; her second aria was particularly strong. As the lovelorn bartender Siebel, mezzo AddieRose Brown had a warm and brilliant sound, dripping with pathos. Her doomed love for Marguerite was made more interesting by the choice to keep her in women’s clothes instead of the typical pants role styling. Alex DeSocio, as Marguerite’s possessive brother Valentin, was marvelous, with a rounded, rich baritone perfectly suited to Gounod’s emotional outbursts and the presence to command the space. Mezzo-soprano Eliza Bonet makes for a charming, sassy Martha, but her broad comedy seemed somewhat out of place in this otherwise disastrous tale.
Francisco Ladrón de Guevara’s arrangement is a little bit country (and a little bit rock and roll, for that matter); it cuts down Gounod’s sizeable Romantic orchestra to a tight group of eight, adding mandolin, harmonium and electric bass, and shuffling some of the rhythms to give a jukebox-bar feel. Heartbeat has a reputation for such radical rearrangements and, as usual, their irreverent spirit is admirable. But unlike their re-arrangement of Salome earlier this year—which was crazy in a good way—de Guevara’s cut of Faust never fully jells with Gounod’s sweetness nor with the production itself. Jacob Ashworth (who plays a mean mandolin!) kept tempi throughout that felt ever so slightly sluggish, taking both the comedy and the tension down a notch.
Holdren’s final image is a heaven without men—Marguerite, Siebel and Martha drinking white wine on the front lawn as birds chirp, while Marguerite gazes down at a sleeping baby. It’s a nice ending, one that seeks to recoup the tragedy of this story. After all, the innocent Marguerite suffers the most from Faust’s bargain. Instead of the divine transfiguration that ends most productions, Holdren concludes with a vision of women at peace in what seems to be this world. I share her desire for a different ending, but I longed for a bit more of the sublime.