Doctor Faust has had enough of Europe. In Africa, he seeks his fortune in love and hunting.

Is it all just a dream, a figment of the imagination? It would be nice! And at first, one could imagine it. In Doctor Faustus's study, there are not only old, tall shelves full of folders and books (from "The Origin of Species" to "Me and My Prostate"), as well as a desk and a lectern made of old, dark wood, but also—almost like in a movie theater—a screen. And while the old scholar laments the insignificance of his knowledge in a mournful monologue, his thoughts and complaints are accompanied by a film of animated charcoal drawings.

But it soon becomes clear that the truth and the harsh reality are brought to light precisely through the hasty sketches, while the old, ossified Faust, embodied by a gaunt wooden puppet in a light laboratory worker's coat, indulges in self-pity and self-righteousness.

The animated film is the work of 70-year-old South African star artist William Kentridge, who, together with the Handspring Puppet Company, transformed Goethe's "Faust" into "Faustus in Africa!" The production premiered in 1995. Thirty years later, it was retrieved from the archives, and the text, which still follows Goethe's original in the opening scenes, has been slightly updated. At the Zurich Theaterspektakel, "Faustus in Africa!" now proves to be a profound masterpiece and a multimedia production with the feel of a significant historical excavation.

Doctor Faust may consider himself an intellectual authority. The power of his reason seems to be relativized in Kentridge's puppet theater by the fact that he, like almost all of the play's characters, can only express himself and move thanks to two puppeteers.

Mephisto, on the other hand, is played by a flesh-and-blood actor. In telephone communication with God, he negotiates the opportunity to seduce the European scholar. He promises the old white man rejuvenation and sensual pleasure. His perfidious plan leads directly to Africa. The two of them fly across the southern continent, initially enjoying themselves primarily on the east coast. Auerbach's Cellar, for example, is in Dar es Salaam. But the safari, in which he kills and destroys everything imaginable, could just as easily be in Kenya or Mozambique.

At some point, Faust finds his Gretchen in Africa in the form of a female explorer. But no sooner has he impregnated her than he betrays and abandons her. He now has his sights set on Helen—a majestic, blonde beauty who seems to have slipped out of the Homeric epics to join forces with the African emperors and the European imperialists.

Faust seeks connection with the elite, while his student Johnston (in Goethe's case: Wagner), a left-wing activist, joins the African liberation movement in order to gain power himself. Ultimately, the old African guard, along with its generals and European accomplices, is overthrown. Johnston mutates into Mobutu, who not only grants amnesty to the criminal colonial rulers in exchange for their support of his regime, but also Mephistopheles, who will now pull the strings in the world.

God, however, is last seen in the film flying away by airplane. He was probably frightened by what Kentridge depicts in his drawings: Europe's encroachment on Africa had strained nature everywhere, provoked bloody wars, and established the Atlantic slave trade.