Marlowe is there, but so is Seamus Deane; Goethe is there, but so is Yeats; Gounod is there, but so is Busonil. In Zoe Seaton's fiendishly clever reworking of the Faustian deal with the devil, traditional sources mingle happily alongside less familiar connections, rubbing shoulders with Shakespeare, Wilde, Mark Twain, Mary Shelley, Liszt, Berlioz and many others.
The same creative team which crafted Big Telly's excellent Metamorphosis has pulled out all its collective design (Bill Connor), choreography (Jools Beech), musical (Debra Salem) and lighting (John Riddell) skills in this darkly melodramatic, wickedly witty collage.
Director Zoe Seaton and her fine cast - Paula McFetridge, Vincent Higgins, Richard Croxford and Elizabeth Keller - worked long and hard on pulling in literary, visual and musical references from all over the place and have created some gorgeous little setpieces.
In the climax to the ultimate moral battle between God and Satan, the hapless Faust - an over-educated creature raised in a chattering, suffocating, bourgeois marriage - is dazzlingly confronted not just by one but by three manifestations of the deadlines of his terrible bargain with the glinting charm of Mephistopheles and his attractive companions.
Continues at the Lyric until February 14th, then tours to Ballybofey, Portaferry, Coleraine, Dublin, Longford, Sligo, Downpatrick, Tuam, Glena maddy and Monaghan, until March 14th.