Faust review: Duke Kim, Nicholas Brownlee and Jennifer Davis star in an excellently cast INO production

Faust

Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

★★★☆☆

Irish National Opera’s new production of Gounod’s Faust opens on some large features that will dominate the stage and atmosphere throughout: three movable model factories, the size of large doll’s houses, each towered over by enormous black iron smokestacks, lazily exhaling fumes; grimy floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, always perfectly adjusted to the time through Sarah Jane Shiels’s sensitive lighting; and, opposite, an equally tall industrial furnace, the menacing orange heat within visible through small vents and crevices in its heavy cast-iron doors.

With these features, and the costumes that soon follow, the production’s designer, Francis O’Connor, both firmly secures your attention and powerfully realises the updating of the story by Jack Furness, the opera’s director, from the 16th-century German setting Gounod took from Goethe’s play to France in the era of the first World War and what will prove a strong anti-war sentiment.

Into this grey industrial setting, Furness introduces simultaneously two versions of the same person: old Faust, played mute by the actor Nick Dunning, and the young Faust he wishes he still was. To this, the title role, Duke Kim brings not only a charming yet vulnerable presence but also a natural ease, clarity and appeal of vocal range to the role of lead tenor, where INO’s casting has been a little hit and miss in the past two seasons. Even the famous high C in his aria Salut Demeure Chaste et Pur sounds relaxed, and he tapers it off with an impressive diminuendo that sustains the scene’s essential intimacy instead of hijacking it as a platform for showboating.

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Faust’s wish comes true through his infamous pact with the Devil, or Méphistophélès. His first appearance, rising through a trapdoor like a pantomime villain, is the first of several moments when Furness overpeppers the comic potential of the role. The most unfortunate of these occurs in the now wretched and outcast Marguerite’s church scene in act four, when Méphistophélès turns away to reveal an alligator-like tail, thereby drawing a cheap laugh that instantly annihilates the intense pathos that the scene had just created.

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Elsewhere the comic element is almost always well judged, with Méphistophélès constantly endeavouring to make the audience accessories to his ill intentions by means of an Iago-like charm. For this the bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee is a perfect fit, both physically and vocally commanding.

The excellent foil to his larger-than-life presence, and completing the excellent casting of the opera’s main trio, is the Irish soprano Jennifer Davis, in the role of Marguerite, the woman whose ruined life is the primary corollary damage to Faust’s wish fulfilment. Davis creates strong connections with those on stage and with the audience, whether quiet and sensitive, as in the church or her act-three aria, or when occasionally releasing her full Wagnerian capacity.

The production’s most emotionally powerful moment features Davis holding her dying brother – played with great presence by the always dependable Gyula Nagy – as he refuses to forgive her for having a child out of wedlock.

Elaine Kelly, the conductor, keeps things moving along but does not always show a firm hand in maintaining ensemble.

Faust continues at the Gaiety, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, on Tuesday, October 3rd, Thursday, October 5th, and Saturday, October 7th