5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enter Agent, Stinky Feet And All., 18 Mar 2006
By Aco - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Temptation: A Play in Ten Scenes (Paperback)
I kind of love this play. It is Faust transferred into an institutional scientific Communist world with highlights of bizarre people and behavior. Like an expression of the freakish in symbolic response to the popularity of the irrational Havel makes Faust into Faustka, a scientist from The Institute who is curious about black magic. But he must be secretive, and must tread lightly when Fistula (read: Mephistopheles) arrives, stinky fungal feet and all. Does Fistula want to pass on the dark arts, or is he a menace from The State? Then there is the whaky contingent at The Institute, full of syncophantry, overt homosexuality and ass-kissing, they are all as one, their intentions to merely appease the concrete gods of the state.
Beyond that, beyond Faustka as a man condemned to play the fool, what with his curiosities and according lies, and Fistula as a supremely unpleasant agent of evil, this also is about the uninterested and essentially corrupt soul of Communism. Much repect to Havel too, activist, prisoner, president, artist.