Clearly Ambiguous

Two men plunge enthusiastically onto the stage. One on his stomach on a board on rollers [skateboard ?], while the other leaps about him, at times offering a helping hand to stabilise or increase momentum, at others seeming to hunt him down: Until the passionate collaboration comes to terrible end. The hand that brings them together in common action, forms their relationship, is all of a sudden deliberately withdrawn, and the man on rollers crashes to the floor. This wordless image, the emphasis on movement, indicate from the first what the new work from the independent company Nico and the Navigators is all about, namely the issues of self-representation and a quest for connection - ever new associative scenarios are presented and played out. As always we become no linear storytelling from this troupe grounded in the visual arts, but a freewheeling theatre of pictures in motion composed of artistry, music, few words, and some deeper significance. A playground for friendship and enmity Four actors and two dual-purpose accompanying musicians demonstrate how people can represent themselves as they pose and position themselves relative to one another, and how in doing so always observe both themselves and the other. The stage: Non-representative, a playground. Walls of cardboard, moveable and flexible. Oliver Proske’s ingeniously simple and sensual staging interacts with the performers, makes room or constrains, provides little hiding-place-towers for purposes of self-imposed isolation or covert observation, creating abundant opportunity for convergence, turning away and theatrical-emotional presentation of character. Reading the program notes to "Even if I Know You. Intelligent enemies and better halves - a play about friendship" one is made cognisant of texts by or references to literary friendships and enmities: principally Wagner and Nietzsche (wherefore two men, this is one for the deep psychologists, sport on occasion, one carrying a ladies’ handbag, skirts over their trousers); also Schiller and Goethe; and Hesse and Thomas Mann. Though this, like the spoken word be it German, French or Swiss, is as, not of great essence to this scenic collage. Between Affection and Aversion and Abandonment Sayings and quotations are but hooks in a theatre of allusion and clarification. "We liked each other, even though we knew each other"; and "I can never believe you, for you always tell the truth"; or "You were busy with the world, me with myself." Still, it is more in the physical presentation, the bodily to and fro, the struggle with affection and aversion and abandonment, the with or against, than with the spoken message that the power lies. What we see is easy to understand, if not always immediately and fully. It is fascinating in its mix of musicality, artistry and elegance. Thanks to Nicola Hümpel’s direction the performance stimulates, cheers and grabs the audience by means of this fluid, outrageous, associative-poetic trafficbetween lucidity and uncertainty. Diverse projections of self, and variations upon same, are represented theatrically. The performances are proof of and justification of one’s existing, leading then to conflict or disaster, and from friendly, unquestioning accord to (slow motion) punch-ups. Each persistently pushes himself to the fore – each is after all an artist - obliged to represent himself relative to the other. The Poetry of Comedy Pulled from under a large cloth, in timeless clothing, historic theatre performances are staged. Marvellous how, to music from Carmen, Miyoko Urayama, like a bullfighter, wittily and ironically presents herself and her body to the men; wonderfully casual, how Adrian Gillott as a self-interested Englishman, album chock-full of business-cards, seeks ever anew to introduce himself; and delightful, how the couples of friends, played by Martin Clausen and Oliver Zgorelec, variously at, under and atop a table, awkwardly come together. At first they dare not, one hiding under the table, but then, in a verbal cloud of mutual encouragement, they join in song. Such a relaxed coalition of comedy and deeper significance is to be found time and again in the poetic imagary. Sabine Akiko Ahrendt and Thomas Bloch Bonhoff, with violin, accordion and keyboards, by their sound cause the show to be a small-scale, musical-theatrical, total work of art. The evening is a theatrical revelation, with actors who are dancers, who are comedians, who are movement artists, but not “serious performers”. They exemplify people who in various contexts present themselves to others to exhibit how they are, wish to appear or want to be. A big little show of 70 minutes duration. Entertaining and poetic. The crowd was very pleased.

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