Faust I + II

In this nine hour ‘Faust’ marathon Nicolas Stemann is not concerned with illustration but with a clear interrogation of the text – using all the ingredients of the post-modern theatre. Instead of fixed roles there are six actors who wander both cleverly and entertainingly through the drama, taking on Faustian, Mephistophelean or Hellenic features. In a deliberately reductive manner in Part I, then more expressively in the party atmosphere of Part II, they investigate which of the tropes seem to have any contemporary use; cutting here, discovering married hells in front gardens there and ultimately accumulating – for example with the help of ‘Faust’ experts lecturing on screen – secondary discourses and meta-levels.
And right at the end, when an old man exults retrospectively in a beautiful Viennese dialect about his most brilliant invention – post-dramatic theatre – before a nurse gives him an enema, it becomes clear: this production which can send itself up so casually simultaneously always places all its own techniques – including their own contingency – at its own disposal and thereby in an unforced manner succeeds in reaching the neuralgic points of the medium.

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