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It's hard not to be blown away by the Edinburgh International Festival's staging of Faust.

A production so huge, it has to be staged at the Lowland Hall in Ingliston, it leaves you after two and half hours of unrelenting spectacle, feeling slightly exhausted and a little overwhelmed.

From the chalk-faced students behind Victorian desks in a giant classroom full of newspaper, to the pig headed creatures in white coats and pulsating bodies moving in time to the sniggers of Mephistopheles, it's one visual feast after another.

The key moment - if slightly long in arriving - is the moment when the stage splits and the audience follows the performers into the jaws of hell.

Fire-eaters and pagan rites, bestiality and sensuality, writhing bodies carried aloft on forklift trucks, a woman covered in blood carries a pig's head through the space.

It's hard to know where to look next - as the live music from the band above thunders on.

But suddenly, we're being ushered back into our seats - and in very British style, everyone seems keen to sit back in their original seats - and it does break the tension.

That and the sur-titles - the show is in Romanian - which frequently clash with the spectacle and often seem a little clumsy in translation.

It's also hard to feel any empathy with Faust, portrayed by Ilie Gheorghe as a meddling, bumbling fool right from the start.

The seduction of Margareta - played here as a white ankle-socked schoolgirl - does little to gain ground.

But if Faust fails to win us over, Ofelia Popii as Mephistopheles steals the show.

Her amazing movement - crouching, creeping, leaping from the moment she emerges from a cupboard - and astonishing delivery, alternating between baby vocals and old hag growl - makes her the centre of attention, even in a show packed with over a hundred performers.

She's the worthy focus of the applause and part standing ovation at the end.

When we interviewed her earlier this week, she said she hoped audiences would be touched and moved by the piece - as well as blown away by the scale and spectacle of it.

I'm not sure this production by Theatre Radu Stanca of Sibu and director Silviu Puracete quite achieves that level of intimacy - but it was a brave and ambitious attempt and well worth the trip to Ingliston to see.

Faust is at the Lowland Hall, Ingliston until Saturday.

The Edinburgh International Festival has released an extra 30 tickets per night which are available from the Hub Box Office.