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During rehearsals for his 18th birthday performance of ´Dr.Faustus´, Fatty Strudelfeld, playing the part of Mephistopheles, accidentally trips and falls into the basement. There, to his shock, he encounters the REAL Mephistopheles. Lucifer has sent Mephisto into solitary confinement for the major infernal misdemeanor of compassion. Mephisto offers Fatty a deal: if Fatty takes an urgent message to composer Hector Berlioz, Mephisto will take his part for rehearsals, and bring Fatty back in time for the play. But Mephisto accidentally dials Fatty back to the wrong year, resulting in monumental confusion with Berlioz. Meanwhile, he causes havoc at the rehearsals, and mayhem at a family dinner party. This splendid comedy of errors, with its confusion between the world as a stage and the stage as a world, explores serious themes of friendship, loss and learning from experience,all counterpointed by the marvelous lines of Marlowe´s play ´Dr. Faustus´.

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Barbara Barry is Research Fellow at the Institute for Music Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, working in Beethoven studies and 19th century music. With five degrees including PhD ´magna cum laude´, she has written many articles in musicology, including a commissioned series on all the late Beethoven quartets, and five books.

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