shewho | Faust!

The majority of last night was spent scurrying around an old warehouse in Wapping, chasing Mephistopheles in the dark.

Faust was a marvellous night out. I am a big fan of random, interactive theatre. The action takes place over 4 (?) floors of a warehouse, characters dispersing into their own stories, coming together for set pieces and all sorts of gloriousness.

As you are taken in in batches, everyone is given a white plastic Venetian-style mask to keep on for the entirety of the time you are in there. This gave me The Fear. It is firmly ingrained into my mind that dark places with actors (usually ghost trains and haunted houses) are prime hiding places for mass murderers. Making the *general public* also unidentifiable just equals even MORE hiding potential. So I was a little nervous. Then

p_dan_tic volunteered to leave the lift on a random floor on his own. Argh! I still had Lisa and J, but as we all bundled out of the lift at the bottom (?) I decided to disappear on my own anyway to get away from too many people. What with my appalling sense of direction, fear of the dark and fear of mass murderers in hiding, this was very brave of me! Ahem. I also was convinced for a bit that I was going to hate it, getting stuck behind people in my way and moving too slowly, and getting lost. Thankfully, I got the hang of it.

The play is performed twice, and for the first ‘run’ I was mostly aimlessly wandering around, stuck between two levels, and merrily stumbling across action when I found it. I attempted to follow stories rather than one particular character, chasing after whoever seemed to attract a smaller crowd of masked watchers. I got quite a bit, and rather marvellously accidentally stumbled on Faust mid-soliloquy at the bottom of some stairs, and followed him to the completely amazing (and somewhat dangerous – Mephistopheles swinging from the ceiling was VERY close to kicking me in the face!) climax of the piece.

Second time around I thought I’d start at the top and explore the space and see what I was missing, but I stumbled across old Faust selling his soul (the beginning!) and got caught up following Mephistopheles, which I attempted to do for the duration. Easier this time, I think quite a few people had gone. Except he’s a tricky devil (oh ho!) and fast on his feet, and I kept losing him, bah! Still, I filled in some gaps and saw some different bits, even finding a completely new set of rooms that I’m sure weren’t there to start with! And spotting Faust hiding in a cupboard like a peeping Tom while everyone else was watching the ladies get changed. Eventually there was something I’d seen already so I went back to my original plan and up to the top. Where I wandered around a scary labyrinth of file storage COMPLETELY ON MY OWN and scared. Those who have seen it, did anything actually happen here? Then down one floor to a random field of wheat, again, what happened here? Anything? Then back down to pick up the bar scene where it all goes wrong. Which appeared to be playing the dirty drug / sex music from Twin Peaks in the background. To a dirty drug / sex scene. (I really like that music.) Then, back to the fab end again via following a different character.

I didn’t manage to get dragged into dancing / fed booze via Mephistopheles’s magic tricks or anything quite that exciting, though Lisa did tell me afterwards she had been abducted by him and dragged off down some stairs, exciting! I did get curtained off into a room by a man whose character I couldn’t quite work out. He ended up hissing on the ceiling though.

I presume you all know the story anyway, and it’s pretty easy to piece together. The dancing is acrobatic and fantastic. Temporarily it was another world. So much to see and do! I definitely didn’t get all of it. If you can find a ticket, jump at it.

[The only bad thing is if you are wandering around on your own and have a terrible sense of direction you can miss a lot. Following a person is good! Also, it did feel like because it was dark, and you couldn’t see anyone’s faces, people were happy to be more selfish than usual, barging past when you’re all trying to see something, pushing you out of the way. Perhaps a lot of it was accidental in the dark. Some of it definitely wasn’t!]

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Just as exciting to me was the fact that the street just down from it was named after me. Well. Kind of. See icon. Excellent!