Theater Review by Ron Fassler . . . .
Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee published The Life and Times of Michael K in 1983. It won the Booker Prize and is considered an important work by the South African writer for its austere portrayal of a man’s birth through to his death, over the course of some forty years. Exceptionally bleak, one might not, at first, associate its dramatic themes as ideally suited for puppet theater, but that’s exactly the form it has taken in a new adaptation by playwright and director Lara Foot, currently playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.
Direct from an international tour, it has taken the combined efforts of the Baxter Theatre, centered in Cape Town, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, a German theater company with roots going back to 1747, and the Handspring Puppet Company, led by Basil Twist, which has been represented on Broadway in such musicals as The Addams Family and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s an ambitious piece not only for its two full hours of intense puppetry but for its subject matter, which is hardly the stuff of children’s theater. In fact, there were some kids at the Saturday matinee which I attended and I felt sorry for if their parents had led them to believe this would be a fun show with lively and fanciful characters. It was not that at all.
Though Michael K is a common man, he is in no way intended to represent the Everyman. Mostly silent, particularly unusual for a leading character, his arduous story takes place in the past, during South Africa’s apartheid regime, and deals with its racial conflicts. The piece isn’t as much concerned with race as it is war, in this case a fictionalized civil war. Michael K, born with a cleft palate that goes unrepaired, is something of an outcast, tied to his mother to whom he is dedicated. When she becomes ill and is dying, he takes her back to Prince Albert, the place of her birth, and along the journey encounters many trials and tribulations. It has been written that the character has some of the tendencies of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, with regard to being both strong-willed and entirely passive at the same time. However in the case of Coetzee, Michael K is more of a symbol than a human being. That he is played by a puppet makes all the sense in the world in that he is, in the words of Basil Twist’s production notes, “a free soul [who] finds himself being serially imprisoned.”
The harshness of the tale is palpable. There isn’t much room for humor, though there is enchantment to be had in the puppetry. If you have seen War Horse or other theatrical pieces that use life-size puppets in this manner, you know the kind of wonder they induce. However, in being true to the spirit of the novel upon which the play is based, Lara Foot and the Handspring Puppet Company have reduced things to an almost bare minimum. There is no spectacle at play here, with only two or three sequences that can be dubbed spectacular. Most of the time the action is as spare as the prose. Therefore, Directors of Photography Fiona MacPherson and Barrett De Kock’s film projections are invaluable in enhancing the storytelling; and Kyle Shepherd’s lyrical and unobtrusive background score is heartily welcome.
The company are all excellent puppeteers and actors skilled in the art of narrative exposition and deserve mention by name: Andrew Buckland, Carlo Daniels, Billy Langa, Craig Leo, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe, Weseel Pretorius, Sandra Prinsloo, Roshina Ratnam, Markus Schabbing and Faniswa Yisa. Production design by Yoav Dagan and Kristi Cumming and Set Design by Patrick Curtis adds texture and reality to the environment. Costumes by Phyllis Midlane are appropriately tattered, and the lighting, by Joshua Cutts, though on the dark side to help better with the puppet effects, helped immeasurably in tone and mood. David Classon’s sound is first-rate.
The one unforgettable sequence is when a starving Michael K dives into a river to capture a goat he can eat. Without a drop of water on the stage I was convinced I was watching a man and beast swim and become entangled with one another in a massive struggle. That’s the magic of theater, personified in the dreamlike and nightmarish Life and Times of Michael K.
The Life and Times of Michael K. Through December 23 at St. Ann’s Warehouse (45 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn). www.stannswarehouse.org
Photos: Richard Termine
Cover Photo: Billy Langa, Roshina Ratnam, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe, Craig Leo, Markus Schabbing, Carlo Daniels
