SILVER TONGUE, HOLLOW VOICE


 

Following its enormous success last season, Aris Biniaris’s version of Goethe’s Faust returns with a new cast to the Main Stage of the Ziller Building on 8 October for a limited number of performances. It is a psychological adventure, exploring the boundless facets of a hero who is still a symbol of human discovery, moral dilemmas, and existential torment. This extraordinary journey into the subconscious of one of the most fascinating characters in Western literature is part of the National Theatre of Greece’s artistic programme for the 2025-26 season, which is inspired by the concept of language and the broader web it weaves.

The tale of Faust is relocated to the present day in a production that immerses the audience in all those instincts, emotions and physical pleasures that the hero sacrifices in pursuit of intellectual enlightenment. He comes into contact with psychotherapy, delving into his hitherto unexplored unconscious. However, this journey reveals the dark undercurrents of his psyche, which he is forced to confront as the hidden forces dwelling there – buried desires, repressed instincts, fear, and guilt – come to the surface. And it is precisely this shadowy world, this reviled part of existence, that will lead him to attain the highest ideal and ultimate spirituality: love. But to do so, he must shine a light on every aspect of himself that he feels to be impure, on all his shame and inhibitions. Only then will he be able to face up to the greatest challenge of all: life itself.

From Goethe to Christopher Marlowe and the Marquis de Sade, from Freud to Jung, Aris Biniaris’s Faust is a production of intense musicality about the fierce conflict between the body and the spirit, experience and knowledge, and the Apollonian and the Dionysian, as well as the agonising attempt to find meaning in existence and seek redemption.