CRITIC’S PICK: “It is a radical artistic gesture, given the narrative’s setting, that posits ‘Michael K’ as a symbol of human existence. It’s a timely one, too, to consider the possibility of a connection with one’s homeland that surpasses earthly conflicts.”
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“ ‘Life & Times of Michael K’, now running at St. Ann’s Warehouse, is as sprawling as the Karoo desert its title character must cross...To simplify this narrative and still allow us to project our stories onto Michael’s, he is portrayed as a puppet.”
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“The faces of the three puppeteers animating ‘Michael’ — who also voices the character — are rapt...’Michael’ is the result of their deep craftsmanship and their free self-sublimation. He is the alchemy of their attention and as such, Michael possesses his own indelible integrity.”
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“These not-quite-life-sized characters, so deftly controlled, have an ease of movement and subtlety of expression that the finest actors might envy…If, as I suspect is true of many LSA readers, you are interested in this aspect of stage design, Life and Times of Michael K is unmissable If, however, you expect an involving narrative filled with captivating characters, you might think twice before embarking on Michael K's long journey across a blasted, war-torn South Africa.”
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“...adaptor/director Lara Foot has done the work justice...Like the novel itself, the adaptation doesn’t come furnished with a shapely structure or handy message. Most page-to-stage adaptations simplify. This embodiment of Coetzee’s masterwork leaves the ambiguities of the original intact, affording an experience that’s all the more impactful.”
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“We are carried along on this journey of what we might consider an insignificant man because of the story telling of Coetzee and by the extraordinary tenderness and specificity of these puppeteers. They unfold Michael into existence, and when his time is up they return him whence he came. In between these two milestones Michael floats through life like a person bound to earth by the slenderest of threads. Like I said – it is magic.”
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There is a stunning kind of poetry in the puppetry employed to dramatize Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee’s forty-year-old novel about a simple man who makes an epic journey through the physically and morally depleted landscape of South Africa. Like some of the most evocative poetry, the effect of “Life & Times of Michael K” at St. Ann’s Warehouse is often wondrous even when its exact meaning is not always clear.
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