You miss the point. The staging itself is a metaphor for the triviality of faust's use of his contract. The final scene dispels the doubt that this has just been a magic show. - Tim Spence
23 Oct 10
I have never walked out of a theatre performance in my entire life, before this one. Utter garbage. Poorly written, acted, staged. It relies on some luke-warm "acrobatics" and some pointless rude words to maintain audience attention. I am a big Nick Cave fan, and expected the show to be very music-focused. Instead, I got some inconsequential background noise. The "Music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis" in big letters on the advertising seems to have been done to put bums on seats. I feel rather cheated. - Helle
23 Oct 10
Icelandic company Vesturport have been one of the most thrilling and inventive theatre groups to arrive on the scene in the last decade. With Romeo & Juliet here at the Young Vic, Woyzeck at the Barbican and Metamorphosis at the Lyric Hammersmith, they gave us three original and innovative interpretations of classic stories. I’m afraid they haven’t made it a quartet with this one. The idea of an old people’s home (which the director also used in the misguided musical Love at the Lyric) with a retired actor as one of its residents is a good one – allowing the story to be told by someone looking back on his life as a role he never played. Unfortunately the idea doesn’t really work when staged. It hampers the story-telling potential and slows down the pace. The dialogue is pedestrian, with clumsy use of humour, and it stages too little of the epic tale to be anything other than an impression. When the actors are on netting above your head it’s spectacular, but that isn’t really enough to redeem a fairly dull couple of hours which seemed a lot longer than that. Not everything can be a roaring success and I’m sure they’ll return to form in the future. - Gareth James
