Joe Hanrahan has a special place in the St. Louis theater world. As the founder,
artistic director and half the company of the Midnight Company, he performs the
roles he wants where and when he wants to do them. Thankfully, while Hanrahan often works in mysterious ways, he always offers something interesting and thought-provoking. Sometimes one thinks about a Hanrahan production for a few days, sometimes only a few minutes, but one walks from the theater with new thoughts, or a new response to some old ones.
The short, quizzical-looking Hanrahan is currently appearing in, "An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on this his Final Evening," appearing through June 24 in a small room upstairs above Dressel's Pub in the Central West End.
As we remember–or should–Faustus traded his soul to the Devil for a life of luxury and the want for nothing, but Mephistopheles has been sitting on the doctor's bed every night for 24 years, and tonight is time for Faustus to keep his part of the bargain. A silent, masked Mephistopheles, portrayed by Travis Hanrahan, is sitting on a stool when the audience files into the small room and he remains there through the 70-minute play, dressed all in black, including high-top sneakers, and wearing a white mask.
The space is small, with neither stage nor set, but Hanrahan knows how to work his room, though a little real lighting would have helped. He does not reflect about having made the deal, but he is angry that his privacy has been violated, his diary read. He carries the beaten-up book, its pages covered by markings like those of a prisoner, four straight vertical lines, then a diagonal line through them. Hanrahan likes plays that include minutiae like that.
Reflections upon whether these lines are "hatch-marks" or "hash-marks" are part of the action. Hanrahan is a good actor, and he chooses work that reflects his own philosophy, or his own questions. Mickle Maher, a Chicago-based playwright whose brother could not pronounce then name Michael, is the author,and Sarah Whitney, who has worked with Hanrahan through the years, directed. It's an interesting evening; one-man shows are tricky, but Hanrahan kept me involved and attentive, even if his point of view sometimes becomes hard to understand.
"An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This, His Final Evening," presented by the Midnight Company through June 24
–Joe