★★★

“its infectious silliness makes for lots of big laughs”

A misinterpretation of the film ‘Jurassic Park’ sets off a Kafkaesque nightmare of university bureaucracy and conspiracy in Tim Foley’s ‘Jurassic’ at the Soho Theatre. The two-hander pits the stubborn, righteously deluded Dean of the University, ‘Dean’, against the increasingly exasperated academic Jay, driven to derangement by a misunderstanding that is costing him his sanity, as well as his job. There are plenty of fun and silly jokes in this very taut one-act play, but the balance between the far-fetched absurdist concept and genuine critique of elitism and bureaucracy is a tricky one. It can be a challenge to suspend disbelief and feel invested in Jay’s Sisyphean battle to be reinstated in the face of a post-truth campus culture.

Matt Holt’s Dean and Alastair Michael’s Jay are perfect foils for each-other, as their initial conflict – Dean’s belief that the film Jurassic Park is indeed a documentary revealing the existence of dinosaurs- costs Jay his job in the palaeontology department. The university provides an ideal setting for a tale of misinformation and power politics, with funding cuts, a perpetually absent principal, staff feuds and spilled secrets all occurring in the background. The absurd central misunderstanding demands the audience’s commitment to the bit, which we can enthusiastically give – but Dean’s initial delusion is resolved quite quickly, and this leaves space to wonder about the script’s practical corner-cutting. Questions like “Why has there been no mention of an employment tribunal?” and “Can you actually campaign to be chancellor of the university you’ve just been fired from?” plague the mind. But maybe that’s just the bureaucrat in me.

Meanwhile, particular praise must be given to movement director Yandass Ndlovu’s transition scenes, which see Dean and Jay devolve and spar with each other as prehistoric creatures. These scenes free up the play to jump forward in time effortlessly, as well as harkening back to the good old days when creatures could squawk, scratch and lunge at each other without all the red tape. Anna Short and Patch Middleton’s sound design bring a purposefully minimal, quotidian office setting to life in tense and climatic moments, and there is some great work with onstage lighting when the rivals’ feud becomes more akin to a police interrogation.

Piers Black’s slick direction means that the tug of war between Dean and Jay never grows slack. But to create forward propulsion while the characters remain locked in this stubborn power dynamic, the play introduces higher and higher stakes that occasionally deviate in tone from the play’s absurd concept. There’s a murder, which remains darkly comic but feels a little crowbarred in. Subsequently, a reveal about Jay’s own misdeeds, which have been subtly alluded to with his frequenting of student bars, do make it quite difficult to maintain the sympathy for his character that has swept the audience along on his futile journey. As the play reaches its climax, any catharsis we might feel on his behalf is marred slightly, and although the ending comes satisfying full-circle, it does stretch the possibilities of play’s universe a bit too far to feel entirely earned.

Foley’s play clearly relishes in its absurd concept, and its infectious silliness makes for lots of big laughs. Still, I think there is more satirical material to mine from this recognisable tale of faculty politics, without the introduction of some tonal inconsistencies and the completely off-the-rails plot developments, however gratifying they may be.

FAUSTUS IN AFRICA!

The Coronet Theatre

★★★★

“Kentridge’s chalky, smudgy animations, projected onto the telegraph office’s large screen, are the production’s crowning feature”

A collaboration between William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company, Faustus In Africa! makes its debut at the ornate Coronet Theatre after a revival run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year. Integrating puppetry and Kentridge’s animation, with an imposing set modelled from a colonial telegraph studio, the South African production brings Goethe’s Faustian tale on a safari, seeing slaveowner Faustus, facilitated by the devil Mephisto, wreak havoc on man and nature alike through carelessness and desire.

Kentridge’s chalky, smudgy animations, projected onto the telegraph office’s large screen, are the production’s crowning feature: from visceral minutiae like the buzzing mosquito that becomes a hypothermic needle in Faustus’ forearm, to bleak, charcoaled scenery that drudgingly wheels round as the puppets journey through Kentridge’s created world. The animation works best when it’s in conjunction with the action onstage, whether that’s swatting flies or shooting game into a smudge of charcoal, and it’s for the most part precisely choreographed. The maps, scenery and later illustrations of pillage and decay essentially shoulder the play’s whole recontextualization, as most of its text derives from Robert David MacDonald’s direct translation of Goethe, with additional words by Lesego Rampolokeng providing rhythm and style rather than slathering contextual detail.

Designer Adrian Kohler’s puppets have craggy, impassive faces, but each becomes distinctly expressive through the puppetry directed by Kohler and Basil Jones. The principal puppets are handled by multiple cast members, allowing for more fluid and idiosyncratic movement, and the company’s standout creations are its demoniac animal characters. There’s a squawking, sinewy vulture, as well as a perfectly characterised hyena: slippery, grinning and lecherous – a wannabe Mephisto who sidles up to other characters or writhes and mewls grotesquely on the desk. Praise must be given to Jennifer Steyn, who switches flawlessly between voicing the hyena and the poised, aloof Helen of Troy, at one point flitting back and forth during a single game of checkers.

Meanwhile, Wessel Pretorius’ plotting devil Mephisto is the only non-puppet main character, a choice that could be misread as absolution for the sins of Faustus and the secondary characters, merely puppeteered by the powers that be. Rather, there is a definite sense of Mephisto’s power having its own limits as the play continues, with his sardonic, winking presence giving way to frustration, and ultimately resignation to the altogether human fallibilities that drive the puppets to excess and destruction. An insecure and existential Faustus is voiced with a very distinctive combination of tremulousness and gravitas by Atandwa Kani, and seems principally driven by lust for the play’s Margarete and Helen. In turn, each pursuit, symbolic of Faustus’ masculine, colonial entitlement, yields destruction, both intimate and with awful scale. Other destructive pursuits – the pillaging of artifacts, the ecological plundering of the landscape – are related visually by Kentridge’s animations, graphic and affecting despite their crude charcoal style.

One of the play’s sole drawbacks is that the script’s opacity and many diversions may be difficult to follow for those who are not previously familiar with Goethe’s writing and complicated plot. Kentridge’s animations do the most heavy-lifting thematically, especially when the adaptation’s script is trying to distil both Goethe’s massive, knotty text as well as lofty themes of colonial ruin and civil war. It’s true too that the play’s conclusion has more of an impact if you have prior knowledge of how it diverges from the ending of the original text. Faustus In Africa! says something stark about accountability and rehabilitation for colonialists and warmongers, but feels all the more deliberate if you have that point of reference to Faustus’ redemption as written by Goethe, or even Faustus’ damnation as written by Marlowe. In Kentridge’s tale of colonial havoc, the ‘little gods’ who Mephisto joins briefly on earth neither repent nor suffer punishment, only emerge and persist from the wreckage they’ve created.

JURASSIC

Soho Theatre

★★★

“its infectious silliness makes for lots of big laughs”

JURASSIC

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 20th November 2025

by Emily Lipscombe

Photography by Chris Payne

Recently reviewed at Soho Theatre venues:

JURASSIC

JURASSIC

JURASSIC

FAUSTUS IN AFRICA!

The Coronet Theatre

★★★★

“Kentridge’s chalky, smudgy animations, projected onto the telegraph office’s large screen, are the production’s crowning feature”