Faustus
by David Mamet

Name: Faustus
Brand: David Mamet
SKU: 9781400076482
Rating: 3.17 (140 reviews)

Highlights

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90 minsAmerican

What readers are saying

Readers have mixed feelings about this adaptation of Faustus. While many praise Mamet's innovative approach and engaging storytelling, others find the language pretentious and the plot murky. Some appreciate the depth of the characters and themes, while others are disappointed by the lack of substance compared to the original works.

Innovative adaptation of a classicEngaging storytellingDeep character explorationLanguage can be pretentiousPlot feels murky at times

Synopsis

Having put his personal stamp on the contemporary theater, David Mamet now performs the supremely audacious feat of reinventing the theater of the past.

He does so by telling his own ingenious and eerily moving version of the tragedy of Dr. Faustus.

Mamet’s Faustus—like Marlowe’s and Goethe’s before him—is a philosopher whose life’s work has been the pursuit of “the secret engine of the world.”

He is also the distracted father of a small, adoring son.

Out of the clash between love and intellect and the fatal operation of Faustus’ pride, Mamet fashions a work that is at once caustic and heart-wrenching and whose resplendent language marries metaphysics to conman’s patter.

A meditation on reason and folly, fathers and sons, and a breathtaking display of magic both literal and theatrical, Faustus is a triumph.