Two idols and lots of cute girls at Saturday's Autumn Collection #njc10

It stood out: what a lot of cute girls in Theatre Kikker. Could it be because of the programming? Now there were a lot of cute men to choose from on Saturday night. The tough acting beasts of FC Bergman, for instance, or the androgynous Nik van den Berg, or perhaps the seemingly sweet Bert Hana. And if not, there was always DJ Oscar Kocken, who talks the evening together as if it were a bingo.

FC Bergman made a name for themselves last season with their megalomaniac show with the idiotically long title starting with Walking on the Champs Elysées..., and which out of nowhere was selected for The Dutch Theatre Festival. That was a collage of visual scenes in a huge factory hall, but with The Homecoming by Pinter, they show that they can impress even in the hall with a repertory piece.

The whole stage is littered with rubbish, boxes, plastic, paper with a few chairs and a fridge in between. This is where Max and Teddy live. The actors are smeared with gunk, smoking, drinking cans of beer, fuming and arguing. This is also where Lenny is from, but he became a philosophy professor in America. And now he visits home, with his wife Ruth. FC Bergman has chosen this text well and adapted it to their great strengths: Rik Verheye and Stef Aerts play Teddy and Max with boundless energy, Bart Hollanders as the bedraggled and controlled Lenny opposite, in no way in charge of the situation.

But the star is still Matteo Simoni as Ruth. He fell in Walking... already stood out as a physically playing animal lover, but how he shapes a troubled character here in text, attitude and presence is unimaginably clever and magnetic to watch. This is truly an actor of the outer category, a star in the making.

The performance lingers a bit on the skilfully sketched contradiction between energy and timidity and lasts far too long, but it is deliciously dirty, bawdy and, amid the mess of the set, does justice to Pinter's linguistic violence and to his perversion. The Homecoming was made at drama school, even before Walking... and I am already looking forward to FC Bergman's next one.

Another star, but of a very different category is Nik van den Berg. In the performance My momma loves my guitar sound he plays a pastiche on to glam rockers. Or maybe it's all serious? Clad in snake-printed spandex and a ruffled blouse, accompanied by a drummer and a keyboardist, himself playing bass, he rocks his way through songs very reminiscent of Prince, T-Rex, Bowie, Billy Joel or Van Halen. In between, he monologues in English about time, love and other clichés, full of repetitions, always showing the rock god's rakish poses, carelessly throwing away his sunglasses or lighting another cigarette butt.

It is unimaginably fascinating what Van den Berg does, as you become increasingly confused about who is making fun of whom here. He grosses in insoluble contradictions: a real rock band with guitar solos from the computer; endless monologues and loose funk; neat and slavish emulation of the rock idiom and idiosyncratic vanity. Volume for a stadium on a few square metres in the small hall of Kikker. A performer with limited musical talent but theatrical finesse.

And the greatest contrast of all: when Van den Berg transforms from unapproachably arrogant idol to a shy and unlikely young boy in a matter of seconds at the final applause. It is pure and beautiful camp what he makes and, even though I have no idea where to go with this remarkable artist, I will gladly keep following him.

And so this evening's Autumn Collection delivered two new heroes. Not a bad score, for either the reviewer or the girls.

Autumn collection 30 October 2010 Theatre Kikker.