Don’t miss: SA culture moment in London – William Kentridge’s Faustus in Africa!

This November, London’s Coronet Theatre welcomes the return of a South African original: William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company’s Faustus in Africa! (5–16 November). Three decades after its first staging in Cape Town, the production makes its London premiere, bringing with it the distinct mix of puppetry, projected animation and live performance that has defined Kentridge’s theatrical language.

The story is drawn from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, but here it unfolds on safari, in a landscape charged with Africa’s histories of desire, greed and extraction. The South African cast includes Atandwa Kani, Mongi Mthombeni and Jennifer Steyn, with a score by James Phillips and Warrick Sony. Together, they re-stage a production that helped shape both South African theatre and the international reputation of Handspring Puppet Company.

For those who know Handspring chiefly through the global success of War Horse, this is a chance to see where much of their vocabulary was forged. The puppets are not stand-ins for people so much as the materialisation of argument: fragile, witty, sometimes grotesque, always direct. Kentridge’s drawings, smudged and redrawn across the backdrop, turn history itself into a restless performer.

I saw Faustus in Africa! in South Africa. What struck me most was the economy of means, and the precision with which they were used. Nothing felt decorative; everything served the story. The tale of a scholar tempted by power was suddenly about more than one man: it echoed the compromises and bargains of a society in transition. That clarity remains, and today the questions it poses about cost and consequence feel just as sharp.

At the Coronet, the production is part of a larger season of cross-continental voices. Russell Maliphant brings maliphantworks4 (11–13 September), Japanese company Lasta presents Naraku (18–20 September), Hea Min Jung’s code of engagement (2–4 October) stretches elastic across the theatre, and Deciphers (23–25 October) by Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu explores migration and translation. Poetry returns with Paul Muldoon, Don Paterson and Ruth Fainlight, while trumpeter Byron Wallen curates the Coronet Jazz Festival in December.

Yet it is Faustus in Africa! that carries the strongest pull for South African audiences abroad, and for anyone in London curious to see one of the defining works of our theatre reanimated for a new century. It is not just a revival but a reminder of how South African artists reshaped the possibilities of stagecraft.

To see it in London, in the intimacy of the Coronet, is to see a piece of cultural history still alive and asking questions.

Venue: The Coronet Theatre, 103 Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3LB

Performances: 5 – 16 Nov; 7:30pm Sat 8 & Sat 15 Nov; 2:30pm

Tickets: here.