ICR Romanian Cultural Institute London

Silviu Purcarete returns to the Edinburgh International Festival

What would you do to achieve absolute enlightenment? Meet the man who makes the ultimate sacrifice in his search for infinite knowledge. Meet Faust.

Obsessed by a fear of growing old and driven by a vampire-like lust for life our protagonist makes a pact with the mannequin-like Mephistopheles, a bizarre androgenous creature. In fact, the devil.

Silviu Purcarete's wild adaptation of this iconic tale is a large scale work with industrial music, pantomime, remarkable staging and a huge cast. Prepare to be assaulted by a vision of base instincts as you're drawn (literally) into Faust's apocalyptic nightmare of life and death.
                                                                                           (Edinburgh International Festival)

World-famous theatre director Silviu Purcarete returns to Edinburgh International Festival after his tremendous 1991 success with Ubu Rex. This was continued in the UK with highly successful theatre & opera productions such as 'The Decameron', 'Phaedra' and Aeschylus' 'Danaides' (Glasgow), 'Oresteia' (Lyric Hammersmith), 'The Tempest' (Nottingham Playhouse), 'Scapino or The Trickster', 'The Twelfth Night', 'Macbett' for the Royal Shakespeare Company and "Love and other demons" for the Glyndebourne Opera.

Faust is a production of the National Theatre "Radu Stanca" in Sibiu, was premiered in 2007 and instantly became one of the main performances of "Sibiu - European Capital of Culture" programme. The mega-production has won the UNITER prize for best stage design, best actress in a leading role and was also nominated in the category "best play of the year".

Silviu Purcarete - Director, Helmut Stürmer - Set designer, Daniel Raduta - Assistant set designer, Vasile Sirli - Composer, Lia Mantoc - Costumes designer, Andu Dumitrescu - Video designer.

The cast includes Ilie Gheorghe as Faust, Ofelia Popii as Mephistopheles and over 100 actors and musicians. A section of this production is promenade.

The performances are extensively promoted in the British press: The Times.

The performances at the Edinburgh International Festival are supported by the Government of Romania, the Ministry of Culture and the Romanian Cultural Institute in London.

Performed in Romanian with English supertitles. Please note this performance contains adult content and nudity.

When: 18-22 August 2009, 7.30 pm
Where: Lowland Hall, Ingliston, Edinburgh
Tickets: £20 from www.eif.co.uk.