Cast Set for World Premiere of David Mamet's Dr. Faustus at San Francisco's Magic

By Ernio Hernandez
14 Jan 2004

Ricky Jay
Ricky Jay

Veteran stars of David Mamet works, David Rasche and Ricky Jay, are set to serve the scribe once more as he directs the world premiere of his latest, Dr. Faustus, at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, Feb. 24-March 21.

Rasche will play the title character Faustus as Jay will take on Magus, the tempter Magician, in Mamet's take on the classic story.

The Faust legend — made famous in separate plays by Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe — is given a new spin by the playwright. Mamet's Dr. Faustus looks at how a rivalry between a philosopher and a magician causes the title character to neglect his own family, even as his wife prepares for their sickly son’s birthday.

Rasche has collaborated with Mamet on Broadway in Speed The Plow and Off-Broadway in Edmond. Other credits include Broadway's Getting and Spending, Lunch Hours, Loose Ends, The Shadow Box and Off-Broadway's No One Will Be Immune, The Last Dance, The Country Girl, Geniuses and To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday.

Jay performed his one-man sleight-of-hand shows Ricky Jay: On the Stem and Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants Off-Broadway under the direction of Mamet. His film credits include roles in Mamet's "Heist," "State and Main," "House of Games" and "The Spanish Prisoner" as well as such non-Mamet works as "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia" and "Tomorrow Never Dies."

Mamet, scribe of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, has previously directed his own Oleanna, Cryptogram and Boston Marriage as well as the films "State and Main," "The Spanish Prisoner" and "Heist." Mamet's other works include American Buffalo, The Old Neighborhood and Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

Tickets to Dr. Faustus at the Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center (Building D) in San Francisco, CA are available by calling (415) 441-8822. For more information, visit the Magic Theatre website at www.magictheatre.org.