Life and Times – Episode 1

Conceptual art is rarely as quirky and as beautiful as it is in this musical which the little New York off-off-company Nature Theater of Oklahoma has realized at the giant Vienna Burgtheater. The libretto of “Life and Times” is based on a 20-hour phone call which the directors Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska had with their artist friend Kristin Worrall. The subject is her life so far, an average American middle class biography. This material including all the “ums” and “you knows” is sung by three girl scouts radiating joy, accompanied by a live band and supported later by three male actors from the Burgtheater, as if it were a never-ending nursery rhyme – while carrying out rhythmic gymnastics in the spirit of some long-lost Spartakiad. Text, music and dance function alongside each other with glorious autonomy and transform this first person narrative of an individual artist into a collective performance in which surprisingly many of those born around 1970 may recognize themselves. In purely chronological terms, the company do not get very far: after three and a half hours the narrator is just six years old.