Nico and the Navigators show their new piece "The Family Council". Dessau/MZ. The rolls of childhood are pale and dry, they swell in the mouth like suffocating gags or crumble at the slightest touch. Certainly, you could form small balls of dough from them or pierce them with your finger - but of course you shouldn't want to. And even if you believe the nutrition ideologists, who supposedly prefer healthier bottom halves to the actually more desirable counterpart: Crumbs always remain in the end, which crunch underfoot and can only be removed with great difficulty. With their new piece "Der Familienrat" (The Family Council), which after performances in Berlin and Düsseldorf can now be a guest at the Bauhaus Dessau thanks to financial support from the National Performance Network, Nico and the Navigators search for childhood patterns in a present. In the process, they appear more lost and thin-skinned than ever in the dark corner under the stairs, at the climbing frame or at the festive table - which, of course, does not degenerate into dreariness with the troupe, which is now at home at the sophiensælen in Berlin-Mitte. The ensemble around director and costume designer Nicola Hümpel is already protected from this by Oliver Proskes' stage design, which once again turns out to be a chamber of wonders: double doors here unexpectedly turn into actual wings, solid walls open up into secret chambers and a shoe rack gives itself justified hope of a new life as a show staircase. The dark red and the brass fittings give the room a prestigious appearance that certainly makes one think of a "good parlor". It is also such a protective and shameful space in which the seven performers develop their surprisingly consistent characters. Behind the repressions and compromises that seem to be necessary for the survival of every family, they discover the pecking orders of generations and genders, the culmination of which was last seen in Michael Thalheimer's film adaptation "Das Fest". In the case of the Navigators, however, no cascades of words are needed to stir up or cover up what has been kept silent. The experiences express themselves directly in physical defects that begin as a nervous tic and can end in small disasters. The fact that even from such disasters one has to find one's way back into an everyday life in reality visibly suits the ostensibly anecdotal and yet psychologically interlocking style of the ensemble. The two new actors fit into the acting spectrum in an almost ghostly way: One almost has the feeling as if exactly these two faces had been missing until now. That they now mingle in that "Family Affair", which is once described in the somnambulistic soundtrack as "brothers under arms", remains a happy coincidence.

...In fairy tales we know that things are in alliance with secret powers and that dealing with them often means a test. In everyday life, this is usually forgotten. That's why director Nicola Hümpel has been working with her ensemble for five years to uncover the buried meanings of things...... Freud lurks in every detail, and the props become symbolic traitors to their users.... a stylish refusal of fashionable attribution....

People who go to see Nico and the Navigators don't usually expect fundamental discussions and in-depth analyses. In this respect, one is somewhat surprised when the Sophiensaele now announce that "the unique ensemble" will take a look at "the unique rules of the game, strange rituals and peculiar patterns of behavior" with the help of which the family's life together is organized and made more bearable. Of course, as a viewer, one is immediately ready to understand these seven players, four women, three men, as one family. But no family saga is told and no family council is held. If one absolutely wants to, one can identify individual motifs of middle-class family life. For example, the shuffling in in the morning in a bathrobe, although it might be quite unusual what individual gentlemen do quasi-erotically with a pair of ladies' gold shoes. There is also a common meal. However, it is very surprising that only totally dried up bread rolls are consumed. No jam, no Nutella. It crumbles what the stuff holds. In general, there is a certain inflation of bread rolls. They are choked and munched and crumbled. In the end, they tip out of a flap by the fistful. If you like, the woman embodied by Sinta Tamsjadi could be seen as a caricatured formulaic mother figure. Always schematically keep smiling. On the road with the dustpan. She feels loved without reservation. And she proclaims some crazy parenting or behavioral maxims. The audience has an effortless reunion and recognition effect here. For Nicola Hümpel and her players again handle familiar stylistic elements. The play is determined by an occasionally almost trance-like slowness. But it is also the use of props. In the last production, "Lilli in putgarden," quantities of porcelain cups played a significant role, so much so that the end of World Cup Day was even proclaimed. This time plastic cups are handled and stacked. Oliver Proske has also again built a multi-functional stage furniture, which can be wonderfully folded out, opened and closed. There is dancing with a shelf without its contents falling out, which then turns into a staircase you can step down. Mom drinks coffee in the fridge at some point. Above all, parts of this furniture construction kit can be used for wonderful silly gymnastics. Nico and the Navigators usually don't talk much. But there are such remarkable phrases as "He was too skinny to take responsibility", "too much root vegetables"; there is a very funny monologue about the father, who drove a car backwards as well as forwards, advised the American president, owned the biggest apiary, but never got a stitch. An album is turned without looking inside, suggestively oil is poured over the pictures. For this time, too, the motif of "memory" is turned back and forth. Mother's memory of her parents, for instance. Nico and the Navigators have become something of a cult. And last night, the Sophiensaele was claustrophobically crowded. In the foyer, people stomped their toes and blew their cigarettes around their ears. This special nimbus naturally heightened the experience. The regular audience, which also includes more mature celebrity faces, is itself family. This production also oscillates, washed around with different music, between scythe and nonsense, slapstick and crazy acrobatic movement. But it seems clearer to me what was already apparent in the last production: the Nico method becomes routine, it grinds in or out. This affectionate goofing off is always funny and cute. There's a theory about the stupid upper-half eaters (we're back to the Schrippen) and the more intelligent lower-half eaters, who also happen to be even better people. But sometimes it gets quite boring. And such completely crazy ideas as the walking stick vacuum cleaner or the egg balanced on the air cushion of a household appliance - ideas of comparably wonderfully stupid quality I have not seen this time. The "Silent Night, Holy Night" mowed down by sheep is not that grandiose after all. And the performance has abundant, meaning-pretending empty runs. But then again there were pretty moments of bashfulness, of approach or also of complete introversion. The Navigators, I think, have to be careful not to keep putting out a new production for international tours and fall into pure routine.