At the wrong place at the wrong time. This (or something similar) is a summary of the starting situation A. L. Kennedy confronts her characters with in her first music theater libretto. At the beginning of “The Little Lives,” which will be set to music by the young Irish composer Ann Cleare, winner of the Ernst von Siemens award, the circumstances still appear to be harmless and coincidental: In a public space in a city in Scotland, Sarah, Paul, and the married couple Andrea and Thomas, independent of each other, go to their favorite spot to relax. Nothing indicates this venture could take an unusual course. Then, however, another person shows up, a man who says he is a superordinate authority. Referring to his authority, he starts to regulate them and to manipulate their personal as well as political convictions. The oasis of leisure time seems more and more to be a “dead end” – a blind alley without a chance to turn around and leave. Written in a time when the United Kingdom was starting to detach itself from the European Union, A. L. Kennedy creates a nightmarish scenario about the destructive effectiveness of selective influence and the gradual disappearance of the attractions within the family, among friends, and in society.