Theatre in Review: Life and Times of Michael K (St. Ann's Warehouse) There are two ways of thinking about Life and Times of Michael K, and whichever you subscribe to will certainly influence your experience at St. Ann's Warehouse. The first has to do with the sheer display of craft. A co-production of Baxter Theatre Centre, of South Africa, and Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, it showcases the work of Handspring Puppet Company, the same troupe responsible for the astonishing creations seen in the National Theatre production of War Horse. Once again, the design work of Adrian Kohler and Handspring is incomparable. In the opening sequence, members of the cast enter, one of them carrying a bundle that, unwrapped, is revealed as the puppet who represents the title character. Manipulated by several performers, this beautifully carved inanimate object seemingly quickens and comes to life, acquiring a distinct identity. It is a moment of pure theatrical magic. You can say the same for the puppet that represents Anna, Michael's ailing mother, whose health problems set the play in motion. These not-quite-life-sized characters, so deftly controlled, have an ease of movement and subtlety of expression that the finest actors might envy. I don't know if it is intentional or merely a function of where I was seated, but the actors who speak for Michael and Anna often seem to be obscured from view, adding to the illusion. 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. It's a tale of unrelieved misery that leaves one steeling oneself for the next disaster, which is never far away. Born with a cleft palate, semi-rejected by his mother, and raised in an institution, Michael scratches out a subsistence existence working in a city park. When Anna becomes seriously ill, he rescues her from an inattentive hospital staff. They hole up in the hovel owned by her employers, who have fled for the country to avoid the undefined war that has broken out. After an incident of street violence, they resolve to return to Prince Albert, the town where Anna was born. Michael jerry-rigs a kind of rickshaw for his mother and off they go, him dragging her through the countryside. It's not giving away anything to report that Anna soon dies, leaving Michael to wander a landscape largely defined by forced labor, starvation, and mortal threats. Many have interpreted J.M. Coetzee's novel of the same name as an homage to Franz Kafka, and there is something of the Czech absurdist in the early sequences, when Michael, trying to obtain travel permits from himself and Anna, deals with a mind-numbing government bureaucracy. But Michael's long struggle for survival in a brutally inhospitable environment also echoes Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena and The Blood Knot or anything by Samuel Beckett. Fugard's characters, however, possess animating quirks and are enmeshed in stories with fierce conflicts; Beckett, even at his darkest, can suddenly, unexpectedly make you laugh. Life and Times of Michael K proceeds on a flat narrative plane, never building or gaining momentum. His struggle for endurance is ours. The narrative is also strangely non-specific. The terms of the war unfolding in the story's background are never explicated. Michael and Anna are Black (or, perhaps, colored), but no mention is made of race, which may be a first for a play set in South Africa. (I gather that the novel alludes to it, subtly, once or twice.) Class is, obviously, a motivating factor, especially when Michael hides out in an abandoned farmhouse and a member of the owner's family returns, immediately treating him like a servant. But, except for a brief interlude in which Michael discovers the joys of farming, the narrative is all abuse, all the time. This has been a season of novels adapted to the stage, some successfully (Leslie Epstein's King of the Jews) and others rather less so (Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theatre). Here, adaptor/director Lara Foot has not found a way to give Coetzee's narrative the kiss of theatrical life. Still, there is the remarkable puppet work, which may generate enough interest on its own, thanks to the direction of Kohler and Basil Jones, and the entire human cast is nimble and well-spoken. If Patrick Curtis' crumbling farmhouse set design and Joshua Cutts' rather bleak lighting add to the atmosphere of gloom, Phyllis Midlane's costumes feel authentic, David Classon's sound design contributes to an aura of wartime menace, and the projections by Yoav Dagan and Kirsti Cumming effectively place Michael K against an ever-changing series of backgrounds, adding to the tale's picaresque feeling. Kyle Shepherd's music adds many plangent emotional notes. This one is a split decision, a production that is easy to admire and hard to love; a classy, yet inert, literary adaptation in which the puppets are, ironically, the liveliest things onstage. It's fitting that the story's end finds Michael back at square one; indeed, he seems to have been there all evening long. --David Barbour 
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