We all have the presumption of natural justice and Goethe’s Faust knows only too well that this is merely a presumption and nothing more. Moreover, what Faust and the Devil have in common is that such a presumption can be exploited.

Hagley Theatre School’s production Faust on Trial puts the pact between Faust and the Devil to the test in an ironic, witty way with refreshing consequences.

This new play by Josiah Morgan, Jonty Coulson and Stella Cheersmith, directed by Pedro Ilgenfritz, begins with the audience being directed into a room where a jail cell is the centre piece. With audience seating framing the perimeter, we are invited to sit down and watch the two jailbirds, the Devil and Faust, interact. They seem to have everything for their basic needs – an admittedly flimsy mattress and sleeping bag, multipurpose shelving, books and not completely disagreeable food (the red wine – signifying the blood of us all – and multigrain bread made me smile).

These two cell mates are condemned to live with each other’s unrelenting philosophical musings: how much free-will does one really have under capitalism, how can we dare moralise in the apparent absence of God, do we have agency or a soul, or are we merely slaves to corrupt powers, and so on. Their repertoire does not disappoint; couched in a witty rapid-fire word salad, it is a familiar echo of public discourse today where ‘step-right-up’ catch-phrases provide the scaffolding of much identity politics. Papier-mâché on the cell floor represents Goethe’s poems as Faust and the Devil play mental chess with each other, vacillating between hilarious nonsense and insightful, if robust banter.

The audience’s function is not to simply sit back and enjoy the show but to help determine which inmate gets to leave this stifling existentialist prison cell. However, it soon becomes evident that in deciding this, the concept of innocence can play no part because, since we are all guilty of something, any judgement we make is about which prisoner represents the lesser of two evils.

The presiding judge, Helen of Troy, is utterly glamourous in a chiffon mini-dress and blinged high heels, and is obviously far more intelligent than the two men. She is clear that Faust has changed his mind regarding his pact with the Devil: he would like his soul back and to leave his uncongenial cell mate. Helen’s role is to mediate between us, the jury, and the rights of Faust and Devil to state their case. More inquisitorial than adversarial, Helen does a great job as Stella Cheersmith’s comedic rhythm keeps us on our toes.

She requires Faust and the Devil to undertakes a series of tasks in what is a pastiche of banal reality television shows where audiences love being seduced into idiocy. Helen determines that Faust and the Devil have, through enjoying their constant bickering and narcissistic navel gazing, lost sight of the world. In order to invoke a reality check she decides to test their knowledge of women, their history, anatomy and the construction of gendered relations, by being contestants on The Bachelorette. They both fail dismally. Her Masterchef inspired command to make a romantic meal with the barest of ingredients, also hilariously trips them up, with Faust once again giving ground to his uncontrolled appetites. The Simon Says banter is equally hilarious in reminding us how even the smartest person in the room can act like an idiot if commanded to do so. As he embarks on a fervent speech regarding the virtue of inhabiting a singular power in the name of the common good, it becomes clear that it is Faust, and not the Devil, who is his own worst enemy.

The audience’s job is to scrutinise each prisoner and vote on the persuasiveness of their testimony despite both being so abhorrent. For the actors there are real consequences which I won’t give away, other than to say that they represent a cause well worth voting for. And your vote does count! There is no option of a safe neutral position because if you abstain Judge Helen will make your decision for you.

This small production by HTS Six Month Theatre Creation Course is impressively collaborative, political and provocative. The programme notes consist of confronting data on labour inequality, especially pertinent given the current government’s ideological commitment to myopic, conservative capitalism, which undervalues the arts, stifling those which provoke and challenge. The average income for creative artists is noted to be $37K, appallingly under the average wage and mostly unliveable. And yet it is the arts which encourage critical thinking and transformational ideas. This profit-share project is set against the ebbs and flows of daily life ,which the actors humorously share in the programme notes, although it would undoubtedly have been stressful when one is flat broke.

The DIY set powerfully reminds us that we create our own hells. Nestled in an industrial part of Christchurch, Sydenham, Te Wā is the perfect space to deliberate the excesses of life. Josiah Morgan is sensational as the overconfident yet whip-smart, irreverent Devil, and being also a stunning poet, it is not surprising he unapologetically leans into Goethe’s imagination. Jonty Coulson is wonderfully convincing as the desperate and ridiculous Faust, an ‘everyman’ who thinks he is always ahead of the game until the desperation of his fawning monologue.  Both actors embrace the physicality of their roles with humour and acerbic intelligence. The audience is guided through this chaotic trial by a narrator and a scrivener who keeps a tally on the votes, offers the verdict, then promptly clocks off when her job is done. Her indifference is brilliant; she probably has better things to do and less narcissistic people to meet.

My sincere wish is that independent, experimental and provocative theatre productions like this which cut across the consumerist grain, are more highly valued. Faust on Trial is not only a deliberation on the current lack of critical consciousness, it is also a plea for recognising the importance of independent arts as crucial to raising tough questions of what it means to be a flawed human in a flawed world.

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