Eating on stage. That's the standard 'Theatre Dinner', but more exciting. Especially if Shakespeare's Richard III is played during dessert. Toneelgroep Oostpool, the Arnhem-based company that has been going strong in recent years with striking performances, goes one step further again in exploring the ultimate audience experience.
Sjim Hendrix, not only a chef but also an artist and 'food idealist', will cook a three-course dinner for a select group of visitors to the show. After dessert, 50 dinner guests can take their seats in the set. Exciting, especially for those who know the content of Richard III: a subordinate at the British court eventually makes it to king by effectively killing (or having killed) all his rivals, of all ages, too. Richard III is the ultimate bad guy in the theatre, brilliantly portrayed by Shakespeare, who even managed to give him a few touching edges.
Still, some details of the story may make your appetite go away. How does the chef handle that challenge? I decided to ask him:
Richard III is a rather bloody and violent play. How does that work into the meal menu? Blood sausage? Horse steak?
Sjim Hendrix hastens to mention that there are not only dead beasts on the menu: 'Vegetarians have also been considered. And we were mainly guided by ingredients from medieval court culture. Because even then, of course, all those traumas were sprinkled with rose petals, eaten away and drowned in expensive wine. A banquet at court in those days could last up to seven days, from that abundance and luxury we make a modern and reduced to an hour and a half. With dishes that are not commonplace. The menu includes (gassed) goose in sauce madame, pickled summer rabbits with sainfoin, wild apples, fish with saffron and rhizomes of cyperus longus (sweet galingale). But of course we tie off our sauces with a little blood. That had to be done in traditional old English kitchens.'
The Richard III character is especially scary because he drags others into his intrigues against their will. How safe are the co-eating spectators from Richard's manipulations?
Director Joeri Vos interferes in the conversation: 'Really, of course, you are never completely safe in the theatre.'
Sjim Hendrix disagrees: 'On the contrary, you are very safe: the theatre is a place where you experience situations and feelings in a safe way that you would rather avoid in real life, so that, after that theatre experience, you might be able to deal with them better again.'
Joeri Vos: 'By the way, the dinner is mainly before the performance. It is festive, but also informal: there is delicious and special food; a song is sung and a sonnet by Shakespeare is recited, at least Richard won't bother you then. You sit at the table with the actors, get a look behind the scenes. Later, of course, we hope Richard drags everyone along.'
Sjim Hendrix: 'And in the theatre, for example, fire safety has also been very well thought through. There are lots of people in the world who find themselves in very unsafe situations and our audience is certainly not one of them.'
Joeri Vos: 'But they are allowed to find it exciting from time to time...'
The dinner guests are also still on stage during the performance. Will they also have a passive role in the performance?
Joeri Vos: "The dinner guests are still eating dessert when the rest of the audience enters. Later, we move them to a separate stand which is on the side stage. For the audience on stage, it's like being at a small-room performance, on the actors' skin, and they don't have to do anything themselves for the rest - but of course it has meaning that they are on stage. The people in the audience see a whole host of other people sitting there: in one scene, this gives the association of other noblemen at court - at another, they are addressed as "the people". And sometimes, like the people in the hall, they are also just spectators.'
Sjim Hendrix: 'People not intervening.'
Joeri Vos: 'Exactly, that too: bystanders. All sorts of terrible things happen, and the question the play also raises is: what could we have done differently, when should Richard's environment have intervened, why do we just let everything happen?'
Can you give 3 reasons why people should eat with you and be on stage at the play?
Sjim Hendrix: 'The cyperus longus, that is. This is a plant that played a major role in ancient English court cuisine. Back then, it was a common grass whose root tasted of citrus and almonds. That grass is still consumed sparsely today. But it is still vital, it is still growing. Like evil. Or good. Eating and preparing this grass brings it back to life for a while. Just like this ancient text. We are not only trying to understand what is good and evil. But also whether we can smell and taste what beauty is.'
Joeri Vos: 'The cyperus longus is the first reason? Good, then reason two is the synesthesia: the coming together or meeting of the senses. We try to tell our story, Richard's story, in a way that all the senses understand it.'
Shim Hendrix: 'We democratise it - we grant equal power to the tongue, the nose, the ears, the eyes and -'
Joeri Vos: 'The sense of touch. The skin. Yes, the smells and tastes of dinner really complement the experience you have with the performance anyway. Wherein Shakespeare's poetry appeals to your intellect and the music penetrates directly to your feelings.'
Shim Hendrix: 'And a third reason?'
Joeri Vos: 'The meeting. That we meet you, that we 'break bread' with our audience for an hour and a half. I will host myself, you will be on the floor cooking.'
Sjim Hendrix: 'Yes, I'm quite busy then.'
Joeri Vos: 'The actors sit at the table or serve, it's an opportunity for us to meet our audience, to ask them questions, to be together. I think that's nice, to get acquainted.'
Of course, there is also quite a lot of reason to talk to the makers as a viewer. For instance, I can imagine that some things in the play are difficult to digest. For example, a famous scene in Richard III shows Richard above her husband's corpse not only confessing the murder to Lady Anne, but also seducing her. That is a tricky scene for actors and especially actresses to make believable in the present day. How does the adaptor and director tackle it this time?
Joeri Vos: 'I don't find that so implausible actually. It's theatre, of course, and it happens faster than in real life, but how often does it not happen - still - that a girl is seduced by evil? When she's desperate. Left alone. No longer knows what to do? What determines the success of a loverboy, for instance: his exceptional decorating skills, or is also the extremity or hopelessness of his victim's situation? I think the latter. Besides, I think "seduce" is a somewhat sweet word for what Richard does: he overwhelms her - he reduces her options to two: either kill me, or go with me. And she, she does not choose the former and at that moment sees no third option. And maybe there are other, darker feelings at play. And it's all pretty dire, but not incomprehensible, not stupid in her situation and under such great pressure. And it really is of all times.'
And then there are the famous words: 'A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!' Various solutions have been found to this, but especially in a modern setting, that exclamation remains tricky. How do you solve this?
Sjim Hendrix: 'Yes, tell me that Joeri? How do you solve that?'
Joeri Vos: 'Yes say... I'm not going to give away the end in an interview huh. But what I do want to say: it is of course tempting to talk about this kind of thing - about this director's interpretation and then compare that with how the play has been performed before. That's a nice hobby for dramatists and reviewers. But I'm never into that. I have never seen a performance of this play, and am certainly not concerned with doing it "differently" or "innovatively". I am a fan of Shakespeare, and I would like to tell this story of Richard, Shakespeare's attempt to understand something about evil. I think the content of this play, the questions it raises, are important: about what evil is, whether we can blame it on anyone, about how easily we might be manipulated, how far we let it get before we intervene, how sad and powerless it can make us, and how attractive and seductive it can be at the same time. I hope that afterwards, that's what the conversation will be about, those kinds of questions.'
Sjim Hendrix: 'Or that we then talk about what we can do to help the refugees.'
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