Panzerfaust

My belt disintegrated in the men’s toilets ten minutes before the start of Punchdrunk’s production of Faust. I don’t want to suggest that there is a literal connection between the two, but it was a damn sinister thing to happen before the start of what I consider to be the most extraordinary theatrical production currently showing in London.

It may be that any journey past Execution Dock is made in the company of Captain Kidd’s ghost, but I had already begun to ‘be’ in the performance well before I arrived at the venue – an imposing five-storey building in Wapping Lane. The dreary industrial architecture alone was enough to suggest that here I was indeed going to witness a pact between Man and Devil.

Glad to get out of the bitter cold, I was ushered downstairs to a bar seemingly run by ladies from the American deep South, uneasily stuck in some 1920’s hayseed and moonshine dream. It was in the men’s toilets of this establishment that my belt fell to pieces. This is actually due to wet rot in my house but you could be forgiven for seeing the hand of a wayward spirit at work.

Holding up my pants with one hand and feeling a little cold, the group I had joined was then dropped off in small groups on each of the five floors by a swaggering, drunk preacher whose dirty linen suit spoke of restless nights alone with a bible and a whiskey bottle.

By necessity, the details must stop here. What happens beyond the lift doors is largely up to you and the performers. Certainly a main story arc will guide you, but like Dr Faust’s search for the true essence of life, the performance is not a passive transit from one point to another: part of it lies beyond our comprehension. This is the slice for the Gods as Ernst Junger once described the hidden face of war.

Not that Punchdrunk purposefully indulges in obfuscation to the point that the performance is only a journey into the unknown. Key episodes from the myth of Faust have been isolated and developed and iconic cultural references have been woven into the physical appearance of the rooms, corridors and stairwells of the building.

This is perhaps where I would sound the only note of caution. It felt at times that the use of space threatened to veer into the absurd and was perhaps more in keeping with a theme park than as the physical matrix required to support the performance. The sheer size of the building is certainly an issue as is I suspect the amount of money needed to exploit such a space.

At the same time, the space is what contributes to the impression of being lost in a place that holds no memory or ego. Although it is clearly a story about ‘self’, it is not our own ‘self’ and that can be either a blessing or a curse.

A blessing because for a moment I forgot the dangerous farce that is life in London, and a curse because it asks the sort of question which theatre (nor anything else seemingly) cannot answer.

Go see it. That is all.