Goethe Go Home

I was not prepared for it, but now I see it!

But your notions mock Aristotle, doctor. They do not confide entirely in the reason, They default on sense, on the rational assurance.

This grabber is the lead-off speech of Lawrence Durrell's new play, An Irish Faustus, which is playing at Hamburg's Deutsches Schauspielhaus.

Hamburg has been patient with Durrell. His first play, Sappho (TIME, Sept. 8, 1961), opened there and ran for all of twelve performances. But Hamburg's theater-minded populace just could not believe that the author of vitally dramatic novels could write twice like a wooden Indian. So Durrell's second play, Act is, was staged there too. It lasted 26 performances.

Incredibly, Hamburg has given Durrell another chance to work toward his announced objective: "To find out if it's possible to write a poetic drama that's really stageable and exciting." His chief postulate apparently is that if he can't do it, no one can. But An Irish Faustus confides little to the reason and unintentionally mocks a great deal more than Aristotle. Durrell describes it as "a morality," but it is really a pretension. Durrell himself was hooted from the stage at the end.

Shots & Sketches. The hero is a boy scout Faustus who has voluntarily put aside his all-powerful magic ring of alchemized gold. But he happens to be working as a tutor to the Princess Margaret in the Irish castle of the lusty Queen Katherine. The Queen has become ravenous with desire for her dead husband, who has turned into a vampire. She arranges the theft of Faustus' ring and vamps the vampire, turning him back temporarily into human flesh.

Mephistopheles shows up, dressed almost exactly like Faustus, indicating to the slow-witted that good and evil are close kin. They plot to recover the ring --Mephistopheles wants Faustus to be vastly powerful; Faustus wants to prevent the ring from being used with disastrous results to mankind. For those who miss this one, the playbill features snapshots of nuclear explosions and sketches of old alchemy labs.

No End. Meanwhile, the earthy queen is in a state of sexual shell shock, as who wouldn't be after making love to a part-time vampire? Faustus has the vampire put to death by impalement and recovers his ring. Then master alchemists appear before him (old Ben Jonson characters like Linus Pauling) to urge that he destroy the ring and save the world. He does--by plunging with it into the fires of Hell, where he ends up playing cards with the Devil.

Hamburg never gives up. A Schauspielhaus official sighed perplexedly and said: "Perhaps we should encourage Durrell to write a comedy next time."

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