As told by Goethe and Marlowe, the story of Faust is of one man’s journey into temptation. Having explored the outer limits of human knowledge, this renaissance man can go no further. Unless, that is, he signs a pact with the devil. In exchange for his soul, Mephistopheles gives him all the earthly pleasure and intellectual satisfaction he desires.
But sins have consequences and in this ambitious show by William Kentridge for South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, a reworking of a 1995 production, Faustus does not take this journey towards damnation alone: the world comes with him. Now, his list of job titles extends to missionary and enslaver, and his travels across the African continent lead to war, exploitation and environmental catastrophe. If there were an eighth deadly sin, it would be that of colonialism.
It is a fertile idea, one that allows Kentridge to present a parable about western hubris. In a rhyming translation by the late Robert David Macdonald, he shows the damaging legacy of the quest for wealth, power and resources, its impact not just a historical blip but a lasting wound. In a clever twist, Faustus escapes damnation because a corrupted continent has become dependent on his venal ways and cannot afford to lose him. It is as if the whole of Africa is a victim of Stockholm syndrome.
Set in an early-20th-century library where a manual telephone exchange connects calls from a disembodied devil, Faustus in Africa! tells much of its story through Kentridge’s scratchy black-and-white animations projected at the back of the stage. Maps chart Faustus’s progress across the land, where a bloodthirsty safari destroys not only elk, warthogs and buffalo, but also the statues of great thinkers, leaving “the wound of a slashed future”.
Half-size human puppets by Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones rise up from behind the bookshelves, meeting skeletal animals, a shadow-puppet military parade and the occasional grisly fate. Only Mephistopheles takes human form (a suave Wessel Pretorius in “corrective shoes” to hide his devil’s hoof). Operated by two puppeteers, Faustus is square-jawed and gaunt, an unreflecting figure, indifferent to his impact.
For all that it looks striking, static exchanges between inanimate puppets sap some of the energy from an enterprising production.
• At the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 23 August
• All our Edinburgh festival reviews
