The show will be part two of the troupe's artistic mounting of the sprawling, seldom-seen classic. The first part, called These Very Serious Jokes, premiered in January. Target Margin's artistic director David Herskovits directs, per usual. Sinister, snake-voiced actor David Greenspan played Mephisto to Will Badgett's Faustus in playwright Douglas Langworthy's new adaptation. These Very Serious Jokes represented roughly 2,600 lines of Goethe's 12,000-line play. Herskovits gives the work a primitive theatricality. The drama is depicted as being performed by a ragtag German theatre group, complete with producer and resident playwright. The resulting performance has the intended feel of a dress rehearsal, with actors openly signalling for sound cues and interrupting each other with calls of "That line's been cut." Simple paper drops, cloth curtains and crude props (Greenspan's Mephisto wears a headband of red horns; God dons a very fake white beard) crowd the cluttered and colorful stage, on which a stage manager performs her duties in clear sight.Jokes ends with Faust's first encounter with Gretchen.

Faust in Love will run six weeks. The Target Margin season begins Oct. 13 with People Are Wrong, a co-production with the Vineyard Theatre.