Review Roundup: LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K at St. Ann's Warehouse

St. Ann’s Warehouse is now presenting The Life & Times of Michael K (running through December 23), adapted by Lara Foot, in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company, from J.M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize-winning novel, was a runaway hit in this summer’s Galway International Arts Festival and Edinburgh Fringe, where The New York Times deemed it “the standout show.”

The production reunites St. Ann’s with South Africa’s Baxter Theatre Center, producer of acclaimed, blistering productions of Mies Julie and The Fall at St. Ann’s, and the Tony Award-winning Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse). Handspring are the creators of Amal, currently on a journey across the United States, following last year’s epic Little Amal Walks NYC, co-produced by St. Ann’s and The Walk Productions. 

Life & Times of Michael K is the hauntingly beautiful story of a simple man who journeys through war-torn South Africa to return his dying mother to the farm where she was born. He finds strength in his own humanity, his profound connection to the earth, and his unique path, which reveals to him his reason for living. Michael becomes a metaphor for the earth itself—mistreated and neglected in times of political tumult, but gentle and generous in spirit. 

Let's see what the critics had to say...

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Tim Teeman, Daily Beast: The puppeteers do an astonishing job of being present and yet recessive. We believe in the Michael K in front of us, and his journey—including an epic underwater struggle with a goat he wants to kill to eat. While the show is as intense and unsparing as it may sound, it also finds windows of clever and welcome wit, such as the moment when Michael K finally has some sustenance he begrudgingly shares it with his operators. Heartbreakingly, when he is brutalized, those same operators do all they can to keep their hands on him, to keep him safe, until they are forced away.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theatre: At two hours without an intermission, “Life & Times of Michael K” feels too long, especially since the narrative is not always clear. The scenes aren’t always crisply differentiated from one another, the episodes can feel repetitive, and it doesn’t help that some of the dialogue is in South African languages other than English, and all of it is in South African accents. (It would help to read the novel, which is short, beforehand.) But some of the uncertainty is deliberate – it’s the point; it’s no coincidence that Michael K.’s experiences suggest Joseph K.’s in Kafka’s “The Trial,” but it’s not just external. ”Always,” one narrator says, “when he tried to explain himself to himself, there remained a gap, a hole, a darkness before which his understanding bulked, into which it was useless to pour words.”

Amelia Merrill, New York Theatre Guide: Life & Times of Michael K, now running at St. Ann’s Warehouse, is as sprawling as the Karoo desert its title character must cross. The Baxter Theatre Centre and Dusseldorfer Schauspielhaus production tackles the landscape of South African apartheid along with the literal landscape of the war-torn nation its title character traverses. To simplify this narrative and still allow us to project our stories onto Michael’s, he is portrayed as a puppet. Handspring Puppet Company’s creations, designed and built by Adrian Kohler in collaboration with the rest of the company, are exquisite, lifelike, expressive without venturing to the uncanny valley, and small enough to convey vulnerability without feeling doll-like.

Sandy MacDonald, New York Stage Review: This is not a family-oriented puppet show, as a birth scene early on makes clear. Having screamed a torrent of obscenities in late labor, Michael K’s mother – a three-quarter-scale puppet with a race-indeterminate, ageless but weathered look – recoils at the sight of her newborn’s cleft palate. A closeup appears on a rear screen: “It looks like a tiny rabbit,” notes a nurse (Sandra Prinsloo, excellent in several non-puppeteering roles). Michael’s mother, unable/unwilling to care for the child while housekeeping for a rich couple, packs him off to an orphanage, where of course he is mercilessly teased. The child puppets – designed, as are all, by Adrian Kohler in concert with the company – are expertly crafted, manipulated, and voiced, without a trace of cutesiness.

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