Alum plays "1600, Battle of Nieuwpoort": promising start to historical series

It was announced today that the Gijsbrecht tradition revived since five years Stops again due to lack of subsidy. A pity, of course, though we need not mourn so hard the end of this Amsterdam custom, which has existed since 1638. After all, the play is totally unplayable, historically completely beside the point and, all in all, a rather pretentious portrayal of the history of Amsterdam, which at the time was compared by Poet Laureate Joost van den Vondel to the historical Troy of Homer, or rather Virgil, who was the Roman vision on the Greek original wrote.

The Netherlands and historical drama: we have little tradition of it. All the nicer that the Utrecht-based company Aluin is throwing itself into this genre. The company, which often specifically targets an audience of adolescents with its productions, starts right away with the most historical of historical facts: the Battle of Nieuwpoort (1600).

Writer Erik Snel belongs to one of the last generations to have grown up with year teaching, and so for him, as for so many Dutch, '1600, Battle of Nieuwpoort' is a standing phrase. Whether history education is still as simplistic as it was in his youth I cannot check. Suffice it to say that our knowledge often does not extend beyond that year and that fact. What battle, against whom, why, how and to what end, these are questions we don't actually know the answer to. Something about Spaniards.

So good idea to refresh the history a bit, and even better idea to do so for today's high school students, who could well benefit from a piece of National History.

That history is often about facts in education. But facts without a face are worth nothing. History stories, especially on stage, are about people. Shakespeare knew that, to name just one side street. Vondel forgot that, even though he called his play Gijsbrecht.

Writer Erik Snel is close to it: he wants to interpret and recount a surfeit of historical facts, but realises he needs to depict the people's story to make a real impression. And there is substance: Stadholder Maurice of Nassau and council pensioner Johan van Oldebarnevelt, the two central figures in the play and in the history of the Eighty Years' War, form a wonderful duo. They begin as friends, but one day it ends with the beheading of Van Oldebarnevelt. Now that's a dramatic history that spans 19 years from the Battle of Nieuwpoort to that beheading, and that's too long for a one-and-a-half-hour play. Hence it will be a series - if the subsidisers cooperate - then you can afford a bit more freedom.

Yet I missed in the text - and also in the otherwise very cheerful and smoothly directed performance - the driving undertone of these two men who need each other, but are also at each other's throats. It is hinted at, but especially if you want to keep a younger audience on their toes, more personal drama would be welcome. Now, the text and performance have to rely too much on the respectful storytelling technique, the funny finds and the enthusiasm in the acting. All present in ample measure, but as soon as things fall silent for a moment, everything really does fall silent as well. So then you are left with nothing.

It is to be hoped that Alum will get a chance to complete the series. Writer Erik Snel can then pick up the gauntlet I hereby throw at him: subordinate this patriotic history to the story of these two men. The classical Greeks did it, Shakespeare did it. Nothing wrong with that, to stand on the shoulders of giants.

As long as he doesn't make Gijsbrecht.