...You don't have quite so much time left, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to get to know Nico & the Navigators. Their performance "Eggs on Earth" can only be seen once again today, Tuesday and Wednesday at the sophiensaele in Berlin's lively Mitte district. Nicola Hümpel founded this small company in 1998 at the Bauhaus in Dessau, meanwhile it is based in Berlin. "Ich war auch schon mal in Amerika" was the name of the first piece, still developed in Dessau, followed by "Lucky Days, Fremder", and now "Eggs on Earth". And with this third production, the troupe has finally crossed the border from being an insider tip to a big name in the scene. To say it right away: the best thing about it is the recklessness. I hadn't expected it at all, because I had read such terribly profound things about it beforehand, namely that - in this play - it's about - "the subject of work"... and about "what it means to find a job in the 21st century"... and "what our identity would look like as a product of working life"... and even more sententious things of that kind. But then it is not Oskar Negt or Peter Grottian, but Buster Keaton who is the doctoral supervisor of this theater thesis. It is a slapstick version of the "Top Dogs". Whereby the men in their correct, yet shapeless, deforming suits look more like middles or low dogs, actually all like little sausages. The two women on the team also look more alienated than self-confident, yet more individual, resistant, or at least disgusted, where the men are merely conformists. The whole game comes out of a box. It's not from Augsburg, but clearly from Dessau. A kind of Bauhaus furniture: a twisted cube, composed of many rectangular modules, which sometimes glows blue, sometimes gray, sometimes white and is all sorts of things: kiosk, Punch and Judy stage, pulpit, shrine. Sometimes you see two pairs of legs coming off at the bottom, while two heads grow out at the top. Once there is one standing on the top of the ledge, paddling his arms like a young bird about to fly out of its nest for the first time. He starts to take off, leans forward, but then doesn't dare, pulls back and looks for a foothold on a chair. From the cracks between the box modules comes an arm that grabs a red lady's handbag. Or an endless fax that reaches the rows of spectators. A strip of paper only; but it seems somehow threatening, and at the same time very funny. Like everything and everyone on this evening, even such harmless phrases as the salutation: "Dear team, dear employees, dear colleagues" or "The buffet is open". Every now and then, one of the contributors tries - downright desperately - to phone a Mr. Fock, which sounds like a contraction of Fuck and God. But all this can be imagined or not. Meaning does not impose itself, but always remains a playful offer, of which one can make use or not: the new big world atlas as head protection, the dancing pepper mill, the stuffed bird; red bags, white shoes; and chairs like lightning bolts of wood, which can be plugged together on pedestals to form rows and leave just enough space for heads to sit between them, to push, to drop. Don't listen to yourself, there's nothing there," says one to the other employee clone. And yet, behind each of these characters, as they are played, is hidden a world story. "I want to go up, do you want to go up," is another key phrase. If "Nico and the Navigators" keep this up, nothing should stand in their way on this path. "Eggs on Earth" will be performed again today, Tuesday and Wednesday, both at 9 p.m. at the sophiensaelen just behind Hackescher Markt in Berlin, Mitte.

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