Faust Rocks the Stage (Not)

Abstract

This chapter considers commercial rock musicals with Faustian themes that have been staged or workshopped in New York City between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. Emphasis is placed on the ways in which rock music’s evolving relationship with philosophical notions of authenticity—often involving Faustian theme—stends to complicate such projects. Variations on the authenticity myth in rock music are examined and applied to several musicals: Tom Sankey’s The Golden Screw, which ran Off-Off-Broadway at Theatre Genesis in 1966; Joseph M. Kookoolis and Scott Fagan’s Soon, which premiered on Broadway at the Ritz (now Kerr) in 1971; and Randy Newman’s Faust, which was workshopped in New York and produced at the La Jolla in California and the Goodman in Chicago with the aim of a Broadway run that was ultimately deemed unwise.