EIF Faustus in Africa Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh 22nd August 2025 Review
Faustus in Africa at the Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh is being presented as one of the major theatrical events of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, but I have to admit to more than a little confusion as to exactly what message this “Faustus” is trying to tell us all.
I did not see the original production of this work in 1995, but it is still clear today how ground-breaking this adaptation of the story of Faust, a man who saw little point in divine promises who made a deal with Mephistopheles to have all his desires for power and pleasure fulfilled here on earth while still living, would have been 30 years ago. Using this tale of the “Faustian Pact” to examine the destructive influence of the old colonial powers in Africa, and focus on Abyssinia/Ethiopia using the medium of puppetry had so much to say in 1995.
Thirty years on, that history of Colonial/African nations, and in particular here the Italian/Abyssinian crisis of 1935, still raises many unanswered questions as to why some decisions were made by the then League of Nations. How this production successfully follows on from this history and relates it to the current climate crisis is for me a little bit more opaque.
To delve too deeply into the main events of Faustus in Africa runs the danger of turning this review into a dry historical list of events so, instead, the best thing to do is focus on the actual theatrical work, and here there is no doubt as to the skills of Handspring Puppet Company. This company was founded in 1981 in Cape Town, South Africa and over the last 40 years or so, it has grown to become that country’s pre-eminent puppet company.
As always, for a production like this to work well, an audience has to get over that initial response of seeing the puppeteers as they move around and hear them speak the lines. After a while, you somehow focus out the people on stage, focus on the puppets and start to hear them talk directly. When you add a talking dog into this mix (or is it a jackal?), everything starts to take on a rather surreal aspect as they move around the set, which for the most part is an office set somewhere in the late 1920s/early 1930s.
The skill of the puppet handlers is impressive here and they have the ability to make you believe that this is real, or accept at least that this is a good illusion of reality. The dialogue is in rhyming couplets, and although this does connect in style to classic theatrical works of history, it can get a bit tiresome at times. The choice to present this production as a 90 minute one with no interval was the correct choice here as any break would have broken not only the story line, but that illusion of puppetry reality. For some reason though, although the running time information online for this show is correct, the details in the EIF official printed programme are completely wrong.
The only non-puppet character on stage is Mephistopheles, and Wessel Pretorius gives a fine performance here. Here Mephistopheles is not only the bestower of wishes upon Faust, but the audience’s guide to much of the interweaving threads of this story. Wessel Pretorius is also likeable on stage and it is easy to see how easily Faust accepted his offer and signed that pact.
A large part of this production’s narrative is not actually in the spoken text, but in the animated visuals that are constantly changing on screen at the back of the stage. These visuals are integral to not only the main story but also to events after it.
Oddly, for a production that is attempting a revision of an already very complex historical set of events, plus adding into this equally complex climate change events, there simply is not enough clear information available to an audience. Although many people in the audience were probably familiar with at least the outline of the story of Faust, how many would have known much about the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935? This production needed a proper programme with a lot more information in it. The simple fold out information sheet was simply of little or no use here in giving any realbackground information to “Faustus In Africa”, and all too often the production itself was, for me, opaque in its attempt to unite historical facts with contemporary climate events at anything more than a superficial level. Was there really a purpose in re-staging this work? What new messages or questions to raise did it have? Those are questions that I am still asking myself.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
I did not see the original production of this work in 1995, but it is still clear today how ground-breaking this adaptation of the story of Faust, a man who saw little point in divine promises who made a deal with Mephistopheles to have all his desires for power and pleasure fulfilled here on earth while still living, would have been 30 years ago. Using this tale of the “Faustian Pact” to examine the destructive influence of the old colonial powers in Africa, and focus on Abyssinia/Ethiopia using the medium of puppetry had so much to say in 1995.
Thirty years on, that history of Colonial/African nations, and in particular here the Italian/Abyssinian crisis of 1935, still raises many unanswered questions as to why some decisions were made by the then League of Nations. How this production successfully follows on from this history and relates it to the current climate crisis is for me a little bit more opaque.
To delve too deeply into the main events of Faustus in Africa runs the danger of turning this review into a dry historical list of events so, instead, the best thing to do is focus on the actual theatrical work, and here there is no doubt as to the skills of Handspring Puppet Company. This company was founded in 1981 in Cape Town, South Africa and over the last 40 years or so, it has grown to become that country’s pre-eminent puppet company.
As always, for a production like this to work well, an audience has to get over that initial response of seeing the puppeteers as they move around and hear them speak the lines. After a while, you somehow focus out the people on stage, focus on the puppets and start to hear them talk directly. When you add a talking dog into this mix (or is it a jackal?), everything starts to take on a rather surreal aspect as they move around the set, which for the most part is an office set somewhere in the late 1920s/early 1930s.
The skill of the puppet handlers is impressive here and they have the ability to make you believe that this is real, or accept at least that this is a good illusion of reality. The dialogue is in rhyming couplets, and although this does connect in style to classic theatrical works of history, it can get a bit tiresome at times. The choice to present this production as a 90 minute one with no interval was the correct choice here as any break would have broken not only the story line, but that illusion of puppetry reality. For some reason though, although the running time information online for this show is correct, the details in the EIF official printed programme are completely wrong.
The only non-puppet character on stage is Mephistopheles, and Wessel Pretorius gives a fine performance here. Here Mephistopheles is not only the bestower of wishes upon Faust, but the audience’s guide to much of the interweaving threads of this story. Wessel Pretorius is also likeable on stage and it is easy to see how easily Faust accepted his offer and signed that pact.
A large part of this production’s narrative is not actually in the spoken text, but in the animated visuals that are constantly changing on screen at the back of the stage. These visuals are integral to not only the main story but also to events after it.
Oddly, for a production that is attempting a revision of an already very complex historical set of events, plus adding into this equally complex climate change events, there simply is not enough clear information available to an audience. Although many people in the audience were probably familiar with at least the outline of the story of Faust, how many would have known much about the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935? This production needed a proper programme with a lot more information in it. The simple fold out information sheet was simply of little or no use here in giving any realbackground information to “Faustus In Africa”, and all too often the production itself was, for me, opaque in its attempt to unite historical facts with contemporary climate events at anything more than a superficial level. Was there really a purpose in re-staging this work? What new messages or questions to raise did it have? Those are questions that I am still asking myself.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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