Ingenious egg dance

"Are you brilliant?" the preening department head asks the audience head-on - a question that, referring to the Berlin theater troupe Nico and the Navigators, can be answered with an unqualified yes. They are young, playful and devilishly talented, the last discovery of the last century. In 1999, the group around Bauhaus graduate Nicola Hümpel and designer Oliver Proske was still considered an insider tip, but in the meantime they have played their way into the charts of the theatrical avant-garde with a mixture of unflinching naiveté and highly professional dilettantism, somewhere between Buster Keaton, Wilson and Marthaler, and yet with an unmistakable musical stubbornness right from the start. "Eggs on Earth", as guest in the unfortunately only half-filled Muffathalle, is the middle part from the cycle "Menschenbilder", and this time the seven smart self-promoters conduct their subversive research on living and dead objects in the thematic context of company and career. A sky-blue magic container opens fragmentary insights into mental abysses and bureaucratic hierarchies. In vain, an ominous Mr. Fock is demanded on the phone, secretaries dream of promotion to the upper echelons. Shy applicants with hair standing on end recite resumes of almost shocking banality. Office existence becomes a dizzying tightrope walk, slowed down in slow motion, like a surreal dream sequence. Working can be so beautiful - you could watch them do it for hours!

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