Fifty years ago this month when Richard Burton famously starred as Doctor Faustus at Oxford Playhouse, critics complained about the three-hour wait for a glimpse of his wife Elizabeth Taylor in the unvoiced role of Helen of Troy.

Compare this with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s pacey production of Christopher Marlowe’s play at Stratford where the “face that launched a thousand ships” is observable (the gamine Jade Croot) some 60 minutes into the action and the whole thing is done and dusted, sans interval, in well under two hours.

Can the director Maria Aberg have been reacting to complaints of long-windedness levelled against her otherwise well-received 2013 As You Like It at Stratford, starring Oxford’s Alex Waldmann as Orlando?

Perhaps. But there can be no doubt about the production’s success in showing in bold, Brechtian style the battle for the soul of the dangerously curious scholar Faust.

Aberg underlines what is clearly her contention that good and evil can exist simultaneously in the same person by sharing the roles of Faust and his Mephisopheles, the broker of his deal with Satan – 24 years of unlimited power in exchange for his soul - between a pair of actors.

Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan decide who will play Faustus in a game with lighted matches at the start of each performance; the first to go out identifies the ‘winner’.

It was Grierson’s at the matinee I attended, resulting in an always watchable performance, if not always comfortably so considering the quantity of ‘designer violence’ we witness. Woe betide those who cross the mighty Faust and his murdering minions.

Live music in rock style (composer Orlando Gough) plays a valuable part, including a wonderfully over-the-top song for the seven deadly sins, whose costumes supply a visual treat.

4/5