Review of The Hypocrites' Johanna Faustus

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Johanna Faustus. Is was co-adapated by Emily Casey and Sean Graney from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. It was directed by Sean Graney. It was about this woman named Johanna Faustus (Dana Omar) and her parents had been killed by religious extremists. And she was thinking about taking revenge but she ends up taking it too far. She converses with Mephistopheles (Kate Carson-Groner) and Lucifer (Sasha Smith) and promises her soul to them. I thought it was clever and it was a fun short piece. I enjoyed it.

There was a scene where Johanna Faustus was being sung a song by Lucifer and Mephistopheles. It was about the seven deadly sins. All the rest of the people in the cast (Breon Arzell, Whitney Dottery, and Lauren Vogel) would come up and perform a sin. One of my favorites was Pride (Arzell) because he was just so into it. He was trying to get the entire audience to cheer for him and it was super funny because he was saying a lot of stereotypically jerky stuff. And I think they made a really good point about the seven deadly sins which is that if there were none of them we would probably never get anything done. Like if there was no sloth then no one would ever be relaxed enough to do good work, and if there was no lust there would be no babies, and if there was no pride people would never be motivated. I think this was my favorite part of the show and it cracked me up.

There was another funny part that was also kind of sad, where Johanna was at her book club and everyone else there was kind of a die-hard Christian and she was expressing her opinions but no one else wanted to read the books she wanted to read. It was funny because of the way that everyone acted toward Johanna but also kind of agitating because they really didn't understand at all what Johanna felt. None of them even wanted to read the fondue cookbook that the book from Hell was disguised as. I thought it was absolutely hilarious that the book from hell looked like it was about fondue, which is kind of like heaven.

They had this entire running gag because Arzell who played the pope also played Johanna's father. There was this lady (Smith) who kept popping up and saying, "Whenever you see the pope it looks strangely like your father. Buy my book!" And I found that hilarious how they addressed the double casting because most theaters don't do that. Even though it was funny that the pope and Johanna's father were played by the same actor, the scenes with her father were very touching and in the end her father had to take her to hell and torture her, which was a very sad ending to the show. (The only reason I'm not putting a spoiler alert is because you can't really spoil the Faustus story because everyone knows it, or at least they all should.)

People who would like this show are people who like the seven deadly sins, hilarious denizens of hell, and fondue. This show has a very short run and closes this weekend, so go get your tickets now and see this fun show!

Photos: Evan Hanover