Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus combines the finest of medieval and Shakespearian theatre. Classic Stage Company's Doctor Faustus, as directed by Andrei Belgrader, abandons both poetic ambition and archetypal simplicity, in favor of an accessible reading of the play. As is often the case with productions which renounce Elizabethan transcendence as little more than Renaissance pretension, this Faustus swiftly deteriorates into dull pandering.