FAUSTUS

“I represent lust,” says actress Catherine Terracini nonchalantly.

Dressed in a tight black number and platform heels, sometimes wearing a nightmarish mask, sometimes with her bright blonde hair in a sexy do, Terracini’s role has been expanding since its early stages to end up embodying three demons in Michael Gow’s new adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

Combining Marlowe’s and Goethe’s epic tragedies, Gow brings to the stage the story of Faustus, a greedy scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a life that reaches beyond the limitations of human knowledge. Lucifer offers him a representation of the seven deadly sins –a warning that Faustus must repent and one that he ignores, thereby submitting to eternal damnation. The play unfolds through a representation of the, “dark, seedy cabaret of life,” as Terracini has called it.

Playing, “the bad guy” in her triple demonic role has been a somewhat liberating experience.  “We get to keep indulging in the seven deadly sins without having to suffer for it.” By enacting a world of sin before Faustus, the show becomes, “a play within a play,” which Terracini says is one of the new and exciting aspects of the performance. But it has also been a very technical task.

“The hyphened nature of the language means we have to be constantly focused and on the ball,” she says. The world of Faustus is one of spectacle, a “theatrical, dark, underworld –which I love.” While the objectives in her last roles in Disarming Rosetta and Bug were to move towards naturalism, this play is a move away from it into all that is eccentric.

There is, she says, something special about the immediacy of the audience that is characteristic of theatre. “Being in control of the final result throughout the performance is very special but also very demanding” In what is sure to be an exciting piece, Catherine Terracini gets to sing live, wear lycra, manipulate the curtains, and embody three different characters in one night.

After playing at the Brisbane Powerhouse for a month, the show, which also stars John Bell as Mephistophilis, the devil Faustus invokes, and Ben Winspear as Faustus, will come to the Sydney Opera House in July.

Jun 30-Jul 24, Sydney Opera House, $50-60, 9250 7777, sydneyoperahouse.com.au

BY HENAR PERALES