"Faust". Pilch.

This week Oxford is offering up two giants of Germanic art. Presenting, in the Keble corner, Wolfgang Mozart and his nemesis Salieri in the Peter Shaffer classic Amadeus; and, in the Pilch corner, Mephistopheles himself in Johann von Goethe’s magnum opus Faust. I recommend you go and see both. Sadly I had to choose one, and having never seen Faust before, I made a grab for the Goethe.

I have no regrets. This Faust is an intense experience. It’s a slow burn to start with, but it climaxes in a raging conflagration with the fires of both passion and Hell. By the end the audience were reeling.

The history of literature of course has at least two famous Fausts. The English version, Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, is a staple of the British stage. But I’ve always found it deeply frustrating. It has a mind-blowing opening, with the summoning of the Devil, and it has a cataclysmic close, as Faustus is dragged down to Hell for all eternity, begging for his sentence to be commuted to just a hundred thousand years. But between those two extremes, he just messes around slightly pointlessly for four acts. As empty experiences go, it's one of the best. But it’s still an empty experience.

Goethe’s Faust could not be accused of such triviality. It starts in Heaven and ends in the Hell of a lost, blameless soul. Between the two, the primrose path is strewn with Sturm und Drang. There are many variations between Goethe and Marlowe, but the one that really makes the difference is the inclusion of the character called Margaret in Faust. She is the innocent focus of Faust’s adoration and lust, and her fall from Grace is what gives the play its heart, around which Mephistopheles and Faust fret, complain, whinge and spar with each other.

This production, by Freddie Houlahan and Will Wilson, is uncompromisingly straight. It gives no contemporary twist. It uses a traditional translation replete with ‘thees’ and ‘thous’. And it is performed on a stage as empty as a bared soul. As you might expect for a long play written over two hundred years ago, it has a few difficult, impenetrable sections. But the production doesn’t shy away from these. It embraces them. It demands that the audience play their part, focus, think, and stay engaged. And it rewards them with a collection of remarkably intense performances, and an unfolding story that is simultaneously unpredictable and inevitable.

The stage arrangement is transverse, and this gives the action a natural sense of breadth, which fits the grand themes of the play. The scenery, while sparse, is well chosen: a matching set of antique chairs, tables and bookcases made of twisty, carved wood. But the outstanding feature on the technical side is the sound design, which sensitively and creatively gives life to the scenes, whether through sound effects of ticking mantel clocks and chirruping birds, or mournful strains of music lilting behind the action. People often say they are going to use lighting to create a set. Here, they did it with sound.

There was no programme available, so I can’t give name-checks for everyone involved. But it’s worth pointing out that Faust, Mephistopheles and Margaret gave almighty performances. Faust was a hurricane of anger, desire and bitter knowledge. Mephistopheles was the perfect tempter, staying just this side of pure evil. And Margaret, after appearing duly demure in her opening scenes, just tore the place apart in her final appearance in prison. I dabbed away a tear, but whether it was tragic sympathy or just the fact that I hadn’t blinked for five minutes, I can’t say.

To be critical, this production isn’t a thrill a minute. And there are certain famous scenes, like the witches ascending the Brocken Mountain on Walpurgisnacht, which it cannot even hope to present in full glory. If you want to see what can be achieved visually with Goethe’s text, watch Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s 1926 film. It’s available for free on YouTube, and I promise it will blow your Satan-summoning socks off.

This is a Faust of the mind, not the special effects department. It burns with intelligence and commitment. Having read the play forty years ago, I’m delighted that my first chance to see it truly did Goethe justice.