The timeless nature of the Faustus myth has lent itself endlessly to various re-imaginings over the years. The notion of man overreaching, in a fashion similar to that of Icarus, remains timeless, as is demonstrated with ‘Faustus: That Damned Woman’ written by Chris Bush and directed by Caroline Byrne.

Bush’s Faustus is a young woman, Johanna Faustus, living in 17th century Britain during the Plague. Daughter of an impoverished apothecary and with no surviving mother, she yearns for something beyond her presently mundane life. We first meet encounter the plucky heroine with her submerged in a bucket of water, partaking in some form of sorcery to try and find out what had happened to her deceased mother. Crouched in the abyss-esque hollowed out shell that forms the setting, it could be at any point in history.

As the play is set in the 17th century, Faustus’ mother had been killed for allegedly being a witch, hit with the accusation of having signed her name in the devil’s book. Her plague doctor father is keen to see her married off, urging her to ‘learn obedience’. But Faustus instead seeks autonomy, and to live a life free from any patriarchal restraint. It is this desire for freedom, alongside an urgent need to know the truth about her mother’s character, that drives her in desperation to the dastardly Dr Newbury. He takes advantage of her plight, promising to be able to put her in touch with Lucifer. Faustus succeeds where he had failed in making contact with the Devil, and he remarks that he is impressed with her tenacity. She knows the risks involved in the offer he presents but attributes this as being no worse than being bound to any common man.

Having signed her soul over in the hopes of controlling her destiny, she quickly realises her mother never followed this path, much to her dismay.  She sets about exacting revenge upon all who played a role in her mother’s untimely demise but first begins by having her gruesome revenge upon Dr Newbury, all overseen by Lucifer’s right-hand man Mephistopheles. The first half ends with Faustus trying to cure London of the plague, something which ends with the city going up in flames, much to Mephistopheles’ delight and Johanna’s despair.

It seems that the entire plot might follow this pattern of a classic revenge tale, but the second half resumes with Faustus taking a trip 200 years into the future and encountering the first female doctor, Elizabeth Anderson. Faustus can scarcely comprehend that this woman achieved such things without also signing over her soul to Lucifer, and the moment is tinged with the bittersweet realisation that she too could have pursued such a noble path. Faustus then changes tack, and dedicates herself wholeheartedly to her studies for 10 years or more, and whilst making trips to the future mixes with the likes of Marie Curie. Travelling even further into the future she establishes the Faustus Institute, to upload people’s consciousness to computers to achieve immortality.

The play does become slightly convoluted at this point, and at times the jumps forward in times making Faustus’ mission confusing. Whilst it is plain that she is trying to do good, and leave a lasting legacy on the world, her aims are not always clear. Perhaps if the second half had been longer, there would have been more time to explore the larger concepts and time-frame raised. 

The recasting of Faustus from the rather more gluttonous and hedonistic Faustus of the original myth was highly innovative and Chris Bush tells of how the rationale behind recasting the traditional myth in this way as being the frustration of how the original Faustus squanders his gifts meaninglessly. This is something that Johanna certainly doesn’t do, turning her thoughts to scientific endeavours and the pursuit of knowledge. It is hard not to feel the stirrings of sympathy for her, as she occupies a solitary existence, travelling through the centuries and trying to put the world to right. In the sense, the story is not simply one of overreaching, but also of redemption. 

Overall, I admired the attempt of the play to portray an ambitious woman, single handedly attempting to address structural misogyny and inequality as well having Faustus as a tenacious female lead. However, I felt that especially the latter half of the play felt as if too many broad ideas were being compacted into a short window of time. Which made for a confusing experience, and meant that large concepts were brushed over, or mentioned in passing but not fully developed.  In terms of characterisation, both Mephistopheles and Faustus emerged as intriguing individuals, in particular the choice to have Mephistopheles as a kind of sardonic and somewhat camp comic relief was especially effective. Chris Bush’s revisionism was impressive, but perhaps attempted to compress too much in too short a space of time.

Faustus: That Damned Woman is at the Birmingham Rep until 7th March.