Caution, life

They do their best, even if it doesn't come easy for them: "Nico and the Navigators" show six adorably small-minded people "Strategy for a life without death and dying" is written on the folders the man holds in front of his chest, just like a Jehovah's Witness holds the Watchtower. But no matter whether he wrote the "strategy" or only sells it (gives it away?), it obviously did not make him happy himself. Christoph (Glaubacker, the actors address each other by their real first names in the play) is the most melancholic in a series of melancholics who, taciturn but rich in facial expressions, talk for 70 minutes mainly about fear and defense strategies, about bicycle helmets, package inserts, cheap airplanes and leg shavers (the microbes!), about HEROES & kleinMUT. "Nico and the Navigators" sounds more like the first part of the play's title, like a troupe of spirited sailors sailing into the unknown. But this is a theater group founded in 1998, which has now come to Frankfurt for the first (and hopefully not the last) time for a guest performance at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Nicola Hümpel, born in 1967, is the head of the Navigators; she was trained, among other things, in the "stage class" at the Bauhaus in Dessau, and the fact that she was a performer with Achim Freyer is evident in her clear, spare image theater. However, it has a finer poetry than Freyer's rather schematic and thus sometimes boring productions. Oh dear, a fat fingerprint In the very first scene of the play, the quiet Christoph is overwhelmed by Anne (Paulicevich), a lively, charming femme fatale in a red dress, who sings - in French - about love and its end. He stands next to her, would like to and does not dare, looks and looks, so that she takes the initiative, dances with him, lets herself fall into his arm. He is too weak to hold her, has to let her slide to the floor. From where she immediately stretches her arms out to him again, invitingly. This encounter could be from a Pina Bausch play. Including the tick with which Anne finally betrays her fear: she manically wipes the shiny surface of a table clean as soon as she suspects a fingerprint on it. Nico and the Navigators sit bravely between all the theater-and-dance chairs, the text (here in German, English, French, Japanese) is only one - not very important - component of their detailed movement theater. That takes its time, that gives space to looks and postures, also sometimes to silence (as well as: original hairstyles). The cool, light gray stage design by Oliver Proske allows the consistently convincing actors a distraction-free presence; not unlike a castle, its lookout and retreat rooms, the buildings offer them different levels. Two semicircular walls can be opened like a gate, another wall can be pushed apart horizontally a bit: Cover for the scaredy bunnies, who don't need to show much more than their eyes. Six adorably faint-hearted, procrastinating people travel through these barren rooms, carrying a suitcase or two, committing hara-kiri (and getting up again laughing), fighting a plastic bag stuck to their bare feet. Experience the normal madness of life. And although it is not always easy for them, they do their best - in the midst of the craziness of existence. Even without a strategy.

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