THEATRE: Mark Gevisser
FAUSTUS in Africa! is a work of inventive genius; a=20 total vision fashioned by artist/film-maker/director=20 William Kentridge and puppeteers Adrian Kohler and=20 Basil Jones. As with Woyzeck on the Highveld, these=20 three collaborators have used a classic German text –=20 this time Goethe’s Faust — as an excuse, really, to=20 invent a world out of puppets, animated film, voices,=20 visual puns and meticulous design; a world that,=20 despite its dizzying layers of physical complexity and=20 metaphysical meaning, never for one moment loses its=20
In Woyzeck, the world was that of the mines, of=20 highveld industrial capitalism. In Faustus in Africa!,=20 the world, while inspired by Africa, is more=20 fantastical, because Kentridge moves from his=20 conventional stock of imagery into the febrile swamps=20 of the colonial imagination. Now his colours are the=20 sepias and amber washes of both nostalgia and tropical=20 decay; now his images, snatched from advertisements,=20 maps and magazines, are those of colonial enterprise.
The location of the play is a dusty colonial=20 archive/counting room, the nerve-centre of Imperial=20 commerce. Its design is inspired, functional and=20 evocative. The puppets play beneath a screen on which=20 Kentridge’s animations are projected. As in all=20 previous work of the Handspring Puppet Company, the=20 mechanics of puppetry are made manifest: each=20 “character” is a compound of human actor and rough-hewn=20 puppet, and the tension between the two creates a=20 mesmerising internal dynamic. Because the story of=20 Faust is about human interactions with the=20 supernatural, this works perfectly: every character is=20 made up not just of puppet and puppeteers, but of the=20 being and its shade. =20
In the original legend, Dr Faustus is an itinerant=20 conjurer who sells his soul to the devil so that he can=20 live longer. Marlowe and Goethe elaborated upon this:=20 Faustus sells his soul for knowledge. Kentridge’s=20 conceit is to render his Dr Faustus (Dawid Minnaar) a=20 19th-century colonial explorer/scientist; an=20 archetypally dissipated and gin-soaked old expatriate=20 who, through the pact with Mephisto (Leslie Fong),=20 extends his life to become a Rhodes, the dazzling agent=20 of Empire.
Gretchen (Busi Zokufa), his first beloved, is an=20 assistant in a colonial laboratory (thus giving=20 Kentridge an excuse to enter one of his favourite=20 reservoirs of imagery, that of pseudo-science); Helen=20 of Troy (Antoinette Kellermann), his second, is a sort=20 of flapper Lady Liberty, modelled on an image Kentridge=20 found on a 1920s cigarette box.
Johnston (Louis Seboko), Faustus’ servant, makes his=20 own pact with the devil — this time in the guise of a=20 brilliant, wise-cracking, laughing hyena puppet=20 manipulated with intensity by Kohler and Jones — that=20 renders him the emperor, replete with Bokassa-eque fly- whisk and daishiki, an image of neocolonialism, perhaps=20 of Mandela himself, arresting the Faustian pact by=20 declaring amnesty on the devil and allowing Faust to go=20 to heaven.=20
It’s a twist that reads more as wry irreverence than=20 cautionary analogy: Kentridge is far more laughing=20 hyena than Lady Liberty. Perhaps it is an overlaboured=20 attempt at relevance, but that doesn’t really matter,=20 for narrative in Faustus in Africa! is, by the end of=20 it all, quite incidental.=20
In fact, the much-hallowed Goethe text, in new=20 translation and with additions written specifically for=20 the production by dub-poet Lesego Rampolokeng, veers=20 between mere verbiage — words which give the puppets=20 something to do — and an irritant, distracting=20 attention from the far more compelling visual=20 prestidigitations. This despite some very good work by=20 Rampolokeng and some exceptional performances, most=20 notably those of Minnaar, Kellerman, and Jones as the=20 wheedling, taunting hyena.
The script is opaque and needs serious editing. The=20 nonverbal sounds, musical and aural pastiches created=20 by Warrick Swinney and James Phillips, are far more=20
And the real energy of the production comes from the=20 relationship between the staged action and Kentridge’s=20 animated montages of charcoal drawing. The screen works=20 as laboratory magnifying-glass, as video travelogue, as=20 a window on the unconscious, as the articulation of=20 interiority and alienating effect all at the same time.
Faustus goes on safari: as the puppet cocks his gun at=20 the audience, the screen behind him represents the=20 targets at an amusement-arcade shooting-range. Into=20 Faustus’ sights come first the expected Big Five, but=20 then, too, a locust, a typewriter, a progression of=20 busts of composers. Each time Faustus fires, the object=20 in his sights explodes into a blot of ink. It is=20 brilliant, both formally (Kentridge using the medium of=20 his craft to create and destroy) and conceptually (in=20 the way it comments on the colonial project as an=20 obliterating force).=20
Throughout the play, there is the repeated image of a=20 typewriter: it raises its keys and, with a squirt of=20 ink, obliterates whatever is standing next to it. The=20 ink of Western technology destroying Africa? The black=20 ink of African aspiration overwhelming the coloniser?=20 It is both one and the other: Kentridge’s images are=20 far too multivalent ever to have single meaning.
Perhaps the most inspired sequence is one that repeats=20 an idea Kentridge first came up with in Woyzeck.=20 Faustus, the Imperial prodigy, sits down to a meal at=20 the palace of his benefactors. On the stage, the puppet=20 digs his spoon into a grapefruit; on screen, the spoon=20 becomes a drill digging into the centre of the earth,=20 down past skulls and souls; at once Mephisto’s hell and=20 the colonist’s mine.
We see, for a moment, the grapefruit transformed into a=20 mining headgear. Then the servants bring course after=20 course, covered in silver lids. As Faust opens each=20 one, the screen behind him flashes an image of colonial=20 depredation: slaveships, deforestation, death camps,=20 the map of Africa itself carved up and devoured. Oh the=20 gluttony, oh the delirium, of Empire.
Faustus in Africa is at the Market Theatre in Newtown=20 until August 5