#HF11: There is an old crippled servant haunting the Zuidas

Firs is his name. And he always arrives late. Because of the gout. Poor houseboy.

Firs was created by Anton Chekhov. His masterpiece The Cherry Garden is about the boredom and lameness of the old rich, and Firs is the house servant who sees it all happening. Chekhov lets him die, at the end, when the departing house owners leave him totally forgotten. Furniture he was, and as furniture he will be left behind.

In the location performance Before I Sleep, Firs is the sole survivor of the 1904 tragedy. And only because he even turned out to be late for his own death. Because of gout, probably.

The company Dreamthinkspeak makes experiential theatre, as we know it from a young maker like Dries Verhoeven: the story matters less than the atmosphere, the experience and what else you can experience on an evening in a strange place. And that place is very well chosen. The Amsterdam Zuidas is the crisis incarnate: around a hideous motorway, buildings stand empty, exuding in everything the bad taste of pre-2008 optimistic bankers. The wind howls over draughty sites where there are no buildings yet. In an apartment building, you can only suspect life through the reflective glass. Everything else is empty. A megalomaniac ghost town where you only walk around as a disaster tourist.

You walk through a building, through dark corridors, suddenly find yourself in a department store, and then again on an ice field, or in a shop window. And always there is this figure Firs, who wants to tell you something, but because he speaks Russian and we don't, the message never arrives. Or it must be the message of melancholy and longing that we so readily associate with Chekhov's work.

Dreamthinkspeak impresses with the perfection of its production. Right down to the Dutch support staff pointing you from venue to venue, everything looks perfect. As a spectator, you soon surrender to the atmosphere, and make peace with your inability to grasp anything of the new world you have entered.

Like Firs, actually.

Seen on 11 June 2011 at the Holland Festival