Review: ‘Life & Times of Michael K’ Is a Spellbinding Endurance Epic

Life & Times of Michael K

Spellbinding, heart-stopping, mind-freeing: Life & Times of Michael K (St. Ann’s Warehouse, to Dec. 23) is everything that theater should be, and can be if it is conceived and executed with the same intelligence and deftness of touch as adapter and director Lara Foot in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company bring to this gorgeous and moving adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s 1983 novel.

We follow the title character through the entirety of his life. On stage he is a half life-size puppet, operated by Craig Leo (puppet master), Markus Schabbing, and Carlo Daniels. Michael K’s story is one of brutal, gritty endurance. He seems to be rejected, and beaten down, and manipulated wherever he goes, and yet still he determinedly forms not just a life for himself—but a trajectory for himself, a direction, a literal and physical intent to move forward or indeed move anywhere in order to be free. The strongest theme of the production is Michael K’s focused exercise of pure, fierce independence, when all the forces around him seek to repress and coerce.

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