Would you still strike a deal with the devil if it meant exploiting an entire continent?
Thirty years after its ground-breaking debut, Handspring Puppet Company and William Kentridge return to the Faust legend with a UK premier of a new production that still has bite, even as the world around it has shifted.
Here, the familiar tale of a scholar’s reckless bargain with the devil - trading his soul for limitless power and indulgence - is uprooted from Europe and replanted in colonial Africa. Instead of lofty intellectual pursuit, this Faustus dons the garb of a colonial adventurer, hunting, feasting and consuming all he can lay his hands on. Greed and excess are his currency, Africa and its people, his collateral. It’s a safari into the dark heart of compromise, exposing the blood price of every Faustian pact. The moral is clear: what Goethe framed as personal damnation becomes a parable of systemic plunder and ecological ruin.
The staging remains rooted in the original 1995 production: text, hauntingly strange charcoal animations, and sculpted puppets. What has changed is the context. Then, it interrogated South Africa’s precarious negotiated settlement; now, it also resonates with questions of cultural ownership, corrupt leadership, and the planetary emergency of our time.
As ever, the craftsmanship is impressive, and visually it is both stark and mesmerising. The finely crafted puppets with thin, angular limbs lurch, strut and stumble through a set that resembles an overstuffed colonial office with unnerving life. The infamous hyena puppet (a clownish, mocking sidekick) still steals scenes with a grin that is both comic and sinister while Wessel Pretorius’s Mephisto oozes wit and menace. The company of puppeteers mesh seamlessly with the projected imagery, charcoal animations - sketched, smudged, constantly in motion - unfurling like restless dreams. The soundscape underscores the satire with a pulsing, ominous drive and brassy jazz.
That said, the verse-heavy text delivered with gravitas can feel opaque, the weight of ideas threatening to overshadow dramatic clarity. Those ideas of plundered heritage, crooked governance, and a world on fire are communicated with varying degrees of sharpness. Looted culture hits hardest, with artefacts auctioned and Africa pillaged. Rotten power is subtler, glimpsed through allegory and political echoes, and the planetary crisis is most symbolic: ravaged landscapes and devoured resources seen through the apocalyptic imagery. The audience shapes the meaning, navigating a tapestry of images and ideas. In its strongest moments the impact is searing, but it doesn’t always land.
This dreamlike morality play is confident, thought-provoking theatre linking one man’s damnation to centuries of collective exploitation. It is dense, jagged, and demands attention, constantly shifting between the grotesque and the comic to skewer power, yet when it clicks it conjures moments of theatrical magic. Three decades on, Faustus in Africa! still makes the audience question what – and who – we sacrifice when we sign on the dotted line.
Sometimes the devil’s trick is showing us the mess we’ve made - this is more a cautionary spectacle than an easy thrill.
Show Times: 20 to 23 August 2025 at 7.30pm. (22 captioned, 23 audio described).
Tickets: £12 to £49 (Concessions available).
Suitability: Show contains flashing lights, strong language, sexual imagery, depictions of violence, gunshots and a needle extracting blood.
Note - The 2025 version is produced by Quaternaire/Paris and restaged with support from co-commissioner Théâtre de la Ville/Festival d'Automne (Paris).
Co-producers: The Baxter Theatre Centre at the University of Cape Town (Cape Town), Centre d'art Battat (Montreal), Cité européenne du théâtre - Domaine d’O - Montpellier / PCM2025 (Montpellier), Fondazione Campania dei Festival – Campania Teatro Festival (Naples), Grec Festival (Barcelona), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Thalia Theater (Hamburg).