FAUST. To 18 May.

Tour

FAUST

Basement Theatre in co-operation with the Puppet Club and the Georgian-German Society and Lighthouse Poole Tour to 18 May 2003
Runs 1hr 15min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 May at Warwick Arts Centre

Exquisitely performed, finely detailed puppetry.Based on Goethe’s Faust Part I this miraculously beautiful show from the republic of Georgia is poignant, spirited and pacy. Despite an untranslated Georgian text (there’s a plot outline provided) the precision of movement of the puppet characters is exhilarating; add these carved creatures’ ability to seem to have feelings and changing expression and there’s a new dignity to the idea of wooden acting.

It’s a dream-play: an old man in an asylum nightly dreams he’s Faust. Three puppeteers – six hands – operate this wizened figure, allowing fine detail of movement through wire rods attached to his body. With music underscoring the movement, he floats away into dreamland as if by magic. You see the black-clothed puppeteers yet their quietly concentrating faces, reacting as if they saw him floating in air, somehow intensifies, rather than destroying, the illusion.

In dreaming, he meets first an Earth Spirit. Beginning as a flurry of parts in several hands, this creature evolves into a skeletal figure, its skull detached, from jaw to ribs, from the torso, limbs loosely joined – a mystical being, both earthily human and supernaturally capable of (literal) detachment from rules of motion.

There are poetic moments and ones of intense action, with striking female characters – Gretchen and a Witch particularly, and an old Faust made young again. Set to the pounding rhythm of Prokofiev’s Montagues and Capulets the full panoply of puppeteers fills the stage with a whirring parade of scarily exotic creatures for the demonic Walpurgisnacht festivities.

Surprisingly, but appropriately, amid these creatures, Mephistophilis is a restrained, subdued figure – a long-faced, plausible character.

In contrast to the Prokofiev, there are the slinky lines of popular songs and the apt, or ironic, use of Tannhauser’s ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus as the dream ends and the Faust-figure returns to the sleeping old man of the opening.

It all works because of the finely carved, and garbed figures, with minutely observed movements from multiple operators, in a music-enhanced atmosphere. Puppetry bevcomes wizardry at this level, a perfect form for telling such a magic-filled tale.

Performers: Besik Baratashvili, Giorgi Megrelishvili, Keti Tshakaia
Puppeteers: Giorgi Khechinashvili, Maia Maziashvili, Maia Soulkhanishvili, Malkhaz Gabunia, Megi Elbakidze, Natia Maisuradze, Nino Namicheishvili, Sofia Khizaneishshvili, Temur Kalandadze, Thea Kitsmarishvili

Director: Levan Tsouladze
Designer/Puppet Maker: Nutsa Dolakidze
Sound: Zurab Gagloshvili
Choreographer: Gia Margania

2003-05-17 13:00:05