What’s the cost of life? Especially for those who are standing apart, who are neither particularly trendy nor telegenic? The English DV8 Physical Theatre and its choreographer Lloyd Newson are famous for asking delicate questions on stage, and they do so with a brilliant talent for formulation, a heightened sense of British humour and, at times, with poignant harshness. „The Cost of Living“, which had its premiere at the Sydney 2000 Olympic games, the big contest of super athletes, aims at revealing the world of medals’ other side. Performers of outstanding physical shape meet the so called „normal“ for a final reckoning with a society measuring everything by its cash value. Dance, theatre, singing and show are melting together to form one comprehensive critical statement. Once more, but all the more thoroughly, excluding stereotypes are being disposed off. Fifteen actors, among them a dancer without legs, a nagging Scotsman, a genial, but much too tall ballerino, a bearded soprano and an elderly woman, stage the drama of adjusting and masking for the daily fight for survival. And they do so with touching empathy, in a flush of ironic images and sarcastic dialogues and without any fear to trespass the limits of what is decent on stage.