Directed, Designed, and Animated by William Kentridge

Translated by Robert David Macdonald

Review by Dominic Corr

The Lyceum Theatre

Thirty years after its original incarnation, Faustus in Africa returns with a vengeance—reimagined, recontextualised, and still brimming with theatrical bite. Directed by William Kentridge and brought to life by the legendary Handspring Puppet Company, this production is a fever dream of colonial critique, visual invention, and moral reckoning. It’s not a revival—it’s a reckoning.

This is no dusty retelling of Goethe’s classic. Here, Faustus is not a scholar but a slaver, a colonial adventurer whose pact with Mephisto grants him dominion over Africa’s riches, bodies, and landscapes. The result is a safari of excess, where greed is gospel and the devil wears a smirk. Wessel Pretorius, the principal human performer among a cast of puppets, delivers a Mephisto who is equal parts Bond villain and bureaucratic demon—slick, sardonic, and unsettlingly charming.

The puppetry is, as expected, extraordinary. Handspring’s creations—angular, expressive, and eerily lifelike—move with uncanny grace. They lurch, strut, and stumble through a set that evokes a cluttered colonial office, complete with switchboards and towering shelves. The infamous hyena puppet, a grotesque jester of sorts, steals scenes with its manic grin and mocking gait. It’s a visual language that speaks volumes, even when the text falters.

And falter it does, occasionally. The verse-heavy script, adapted from Robert David MacDonald with additional text by Lesego Rampolokeng, is dense and often opaque. While the rhymed couplets aim for poetic gravitas, they sometimes land with the weight of a nursery rhyme—more quaint than cutting. The ideas are potent: cultural plunder, ecological collapse, corrupt leadership—but they’re not always delivered with clarity. The production leans into allegory, which can be both its strength and its stumbling block.

Yet when it clicks, it sings. The charcoal animations—sketched, smudged, and projected like restless memories—meld seamlessly with the puppetry, creating a dreamlike tapestry of image and movement. The sound design, courtesy of Simon Kohler, pulses with ominous jazz and ambient dread, underscoring the satire with a sense of looming catastrophe. Lighting by Wesley France bathes the stage in spectral hues, shifting from blood-red to ghostly blue with surgical precision.

The ensemble of puppeteers—Eben Genis, Atandwa Kani, Mongi Mthombeni, Asanda Rilityana, Buhle Stefane, and Jennifer Steyn—work in fluid synchrony, animating the stage with breath and tension. Their choreography is tight, their transitions seamless, and their presence palpable even behind the puppets. Faustus in Africa is not an easy watch, nor should it be. It’s jagged, surreal, and unflinching in its critique. It asks what we trade for power, what we destroy in pursuit of progress, and whether the devil is truly in the deal—or simply in the mirror. It’s a cautionary spectacle, not a comfortable one. But in its boldness, its craft, and its refusal to look away, it earns its place as one of the festival’s most compelling offerings.

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