Theater: Deviled Marlowe

The Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus is Christopher Marlowe's greatest play. The current off-Broadway effort by the Phoenix Theater's repertory company is not so much a revival as a disinterment. It is a clammy sort of compliment to pay the Elizabethan playwright in the 400th anniversary year that he shares with Shakespeare, but perhaps better than no celebration at all.

In the prologue to an earlier Marlowe play, The Jew of Malta, the playwright declared: I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. Faustus holds the same views, but this time the...

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