Welcome to the human zoo is an exciting and sometimes oppressive game with real and unreal #DeBasis

Often, publicity texts conjure up an inappropriate image of the performance they refer to. "The airbase as a no man's land: a military state wiped out and where nature has taken over the area," is one such. The text belongs to Welcome to the human zoo, an experiential theatre performance created by Suze Milius and Bram Jansen.

Such a sentence evokes associations with pioneering, empty plains and basic survival equipment. Great, then, is the confusion when the audience is welcomed as if it were a reunion for distant relatives who have not seen each other for ages and are now going to spend a weekend together in a couple of holiday cottages. Every audience member is pinned on a card with a new first name (and all the same surname, van den Berg) and from then on you will be addressed by it.

After a celebratory drink and a happy group photo, everyone will be told which house (goldcrest, blue tit, nutcracker) they will stay in. Then it's on to the old-fashioned bus that will transport the group there. One of the attendees starts a conversation with me in a confidential whisper, about gardening in Zeist. The upbeat atmosphere of a family outing is enhanced by the birthday of one of the attendees, which is celebrated as a surprise on the bus. We sing, hang garlands and eat chocolates.

The bus tour travels the deserted roads of Air Base Soesterberg. Along those roads, strange figures sometimes walk. Begging and defeated, they look at the bus passengers. They look like vagrants, with ragged clothes and crammed suitcases. Then suddenly the bus stops; someone is lying on the road. The driver and some 'family members' jump out to check the situation. Then chaos breaks out; it is a trap and the bus is overpowered by a ferocious mob.

To say more about the course of the performance would ruin its impact. But the play with real or unreal,leading or following, belonging or being outcast, is exciting sometimes even oppressive.

Unfortunately, at the premiere, the show was not yet finished. This was readily apparent in the unfocused nature of many small elements. And by the ending, which went out like a night candle. If the directors still work hard on that and, moreover, clarify the context of the journey, they will have a performance on their hands that can be unsettling and thought-provoking. After all, who is watching whom in the human park? And who locks whom up?