Mention the Handspring Puppet Theatre of Cape Town, South Africa, to any knowledgeable puppeteer and eyes invariably widen with admiration. The 44-year-old company, collaborators with Britain’s National Theatre on the beloved play “War Horse” and the creators of the puppet Little Amal seen in Chicago in 2023, is always described as among the best in the world and thus its presence this week at the Studebaker Theater is something of a coup for the 7th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.
Anyone wondering why Handspring is so venerated had any and all doubts shattered by their current piece, “Life & Times of Michael K,” at which Chicago gets an early look. This intermissionless two-hour show, a performance created in signature Handpsring style by both humans and puppets (and integrated video) is truly a stunner, a bleak and profoundly sad treatment of the 1983 novel (and winner of the Booker Prize) by the South African-born writer J.M. Coetzee.
The Kafka-esque piece is the story of an ordinary Black man in South Africa who lives a life wherein other people mostly tell him what to do. He’s a lonely traveler in a war-torn land, seemingly sometime in the Apartheid era of the 1970s and 1980s, and a person of modest ambition and even lesser personal resources. Born with a cleft lip, Michael K, a sometime gardener, laborer and domestic servant, wants little more than a life of peace as he attempts to return to his deceased mother’s birthplace to scatter her ashes, a mother who did not even much love him back. A simple quest, for sure, but one that forces him to encounter all kinds of cruelty along the way, not the least of which is a world that has no interest in his feelings or experiences.
Using multiple narrators and beautifully integrated video, Handspring unspools this attention-must-be-paid story in a remarkably powerful fashion, focusing their efforts on the titular puppet, a figure so expressive as to hold an entire audience’s heart. I could use any number of moments from the show as an example, but I’ll go with the scene where Michael learns from hospital staffers of his mother’s death; his puppet body recoils, shakes in confusion and then sits still as can be for what feels like several minutes, a physical embodiment of the shock and sadness of bereavement, especially one that impacts so much more than others who are around. It’s a moment I won’t quickly forget but hardly the only such experience in this show.
“Michael K” does not have the commercial appeal of a “War Horse,” and it did not increase my optimism about the world or my place therein. But if you’re a fan of this dark, poignant novel, or of excellence in the field of puppet theater, or merely of works of art that tap into the horrors that global conflicts extract on the least deserving, this piece, which can also be seen this weekend, is simply not to be missed.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Life and Times of Michael K” (4 stars)
When: Friday and Saturday at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m.
Where: Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $40-$48 at chicagopuppetfest.org
Sign up for the Theater Loop newsletter: Our weekly newsletter has the latest news and reviews from America’s hottest theater city. Theater critic Chris Jones will share a behind-the-curtain look at what you need to know.