Faustus in Africa!, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - deeply flawed

What new light can the age-old legend of Faust selling his soul to the devil shed on colonialism in Africa, slavery, the rape and destruction of the natural world, the exploitation and murder of the continent’s people? It’s a question you may well still be asking yourself after experiencing the visually spectacular but thematically opaque Faustus in Africa! from Cape Town-based Handspring Puppet Company and director/designer William Kentridge.

There’s a lot to admire in the show, which arrives at the Edinburgh International Festival in a reworking of the company’s original 1995 production – especially on a technical level. Handspring’s puppets are lithe and expressive, thanks to the movements and voices of the actor/puppeteers holding them aloft. They glide gracefully around Kentridge’s handsome colonial-style set, all bronzed woodwork and stuffed-full paper files, with Faustus an ambitious bigwig administrator frustrated that his powers can only take him so far. Central to Kentridge’s set is a huge projection screen, home to evocative charcoal animations devised by the director, which serve to locate the action in particular African locales, and even illustrate the atrocities being meted out to the population.

So far, so impressive, and so thought-provoking. Whether these various elements all pull in the same direction, however, is another question entirely. In fact, more often they seem to work against each other, even fighting for the audience’s attention – and it’s surely a missed trick not to echo images or ideas back and forth between puppets and animations. As things stand, it feels as though the production’s eclectic elements have been flung at the show as useful devices, with little thought as to how they might intertwine to tell its story or clarify its themes.

And what should have been the central focus around which all else orbits – the cat-and-mouse, up-and-down, master-servant relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles – is peculiarly flat, and seldom compelling enough to sustain attention. Indeed, Wessel Pretorius as Faust’s devilish facilitator sits uncomfortably between glee and menace, with the result that it’s hard to particularly care what he can offer or what his motives are.

Faustus in Africa!’s biggest issue, however, is its underlying pairing of legend and historical atrocity, which remains deeply unconvincing. The production’s message seems to be that the colonial project itself represented some kind of Faustian bargain that caused irreparable, lasting harm for limited, short-term gain – something reiterated in post-colonial regimes. If that’s the case, as the show’s closing moments seem to suggest, then Faustus in Africa! even runs the danger of casting its colonising powers as simply misguided and naive, rather than genocidal exploiters of humans and resources. And that’s without mentioning the show’s continuation of a them-and-us mentality in casting its ‘humans’ as puppets, but its godly figures as humans.

Undoubtedly, there’s plenty to enjoy in the exemplary craft that’s gone into the show. But Faustus in Africa! nonetheless feels like a deeply flawed production, one that not only bewilders in terms of its message, but also, in the process, dares to try its audience’s patience.

• Until 23 August
• The Edinburgh International Festival runs until 24 August 
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