fri 29/03/2024

Faust, Young Vic Theatre | reviews, news & interviews

Faust, Young Vic Theatre

Faust, Young Vic Theatre

Icelandic version of Goethe's masterpiece too acrobatic for its own good

Icelandic 'Faust': Somewhere between Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade and Billy Smart's circusEddi

It's hard to overestimate the importance of Goethe's Faust to the German soul, though I did once have a German friend who valued George Eliot's Middlemarch more highly. If there's a real English competitor to Goethe in the literary stakes, it is of course Shakespeare, but that doesn't really work either, because, when not thinking of Goethe, many Germans consider Shakespeare neither better nor worse; simply theirs.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of Goethe's Faust to the German soul, though I did once have a German friend who valued George Eliot's Middlemarch more highly. If there's a real English competitor to Goethe in the literary stakes, it is of course Shakespeare, but that doesn't really work either, because, when not thinking of Goethe, many Germans consider Shakespeare neither better nor worse; simply theirs.

With so much kinetic technique to admire, one strains to detect any tension or narrative, or even a spark of eroticism

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Comments

Love it!! Went with my college and was amazed by how the set was used. Plus a fantastic story played by an equally fantastic actors.

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