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Dr. Faustus

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman

Independent Shakespeare Company/Atwater Village Studio Theatre

Through Nov. 23

Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is a mighty play in many ways but it also meanders a bit and staying fully focused can be a challenge.

At the Independent Shakespeare Company the show moves at a commendably clipped pace. Director Melissa Chalsma has trimmed the ensemble to seven, and instilled the production with the costumes, the choreography and most importantly the ebullient esprit that marks the company’s work and makes it usually so accessible to their audience.  There’s even a bawdy bit of humor when a clownish figure hauls a bucket on stage and proceeds to pee in it (his back to us, of course, but we see and hear the stream).

All told, it’s a respectable effort but disappointing, largely because Faust’s humanity never prevails over the text.

Adam Mondschein plays the injudicious doctor with professional expertise but he declaims a lot.  Faust’s experiences – of ambition, indecision, despair – are never searchingly shared with the audience but rather paraded in front of them. More intimacy, more directorial effort to break down the fourth wall, might have helped.

The other liability is Suzan Crowley’s Mephistopheles. It’s not the gender-bending casting that’s the issue – as Lucifer, Lexie Helgerson fills the bill – but Crowley’s bland low-key take on a complicated character.  A demon should never be dull.

In a play about a man’s bargain with the devil, either the man or the devil – but ideally both – should fascinate or intrigue, certainly more than they do here.

Independent Shakespeare Company at Independent Studio Theatre, 3191 Casitas Avenue, #168; Thurs.-Sat. 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through Nov. 23. (818) 710-6306, https://www.iscla.org