‘Faust Is Dead’ Is a Puzzlement

As a jumping-off point for his play “Faust Is Dead,” Mark Ravenhill sought to chart “the parallels between the real events of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s stay in Los Angeles and elements of the Faust myth.” Upon viewing the piece, now being produced by Tuesday Laboratory at the Zephyr, one is prompted to ask, in the spirit of pure philosophical inquiry, “Huh?”

Of course, Ravenhill, whose pungently named “Shopping and [Expletive]” made such a splash in London and now off-Broadway, is the current enfant terrible of the British theater. And it is incumbent upon enfants terribles to push the envelope of propriety until it tears at the seams.

Which Ravenhill attempts to do in this sometimes shocking but always elliptical piece about worldwide conspiracy and technological dehumanization at the end of the millennium. But Ravenhill’s mingling of postmodern philosophizing and plain old shock value proves more turgid than topical. Director Allan Hendrick imparts a sense of momentum to the purposelessness. Allan Kolman is creepily effective as Alain, the Foucault-like philosopher who plunges into a pathological passion with Pete (Jason Peck), a disaffected self-mutilator fleeing his megalomaniacal and all-powerful father. Again, huh?

Faust was the ultimate iconoclast, as was Foucault, a determined relativist who flew in the face of societal mores. Following in their footsteps, Ravenhill stumbles into incoherence, failing to make much of a dramatic or philosophical impression beyond the bizarre.

*

* “Faust Is Dead,” Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 28. $15-$20. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.