Although supply has been drops, there are still more new performances than a person can see. So nobody sees everything, everybody misses a lot, which was in 2014 too. But no one would have wanted to miss these performances, even if two of them were not even in a theatre. And no dance, for that too this year our partner was dance audience.
#1 De Nederlandse Reisopera: Gluck, Orphée et Eurydice opera
As you leave the theatre, you suddenly realise it: you are crying. Not heartbroken, you know the story and the opera too well for that; but simply because the performance is too beautiful, too poignant, too smart, yes, almost too perfect.
Months later, you watch the trailer for the umpteenth time and think: why didn't I go to multiple performances? Twice turns out not to be enough for Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice by the Netherlands Reisopera. Thanks to a great cast, stunning scenery and, above all, Floris Visser's phenomenal direction, no other production in 2015 made as many impression like this.
#2 Theatre Group Oostpool, Angels in America stage
Precisely by bringing Tony Kushner's monumental stage epic to the small auditorium, Marcus Azzini managed to capture the essence and many nuances of Angels in America across the limelight. With breathtaking acting performances by Roy Baltus, Jacob Derwig and, above all, Maria Kraakman. For Oostpool, 2015 was an extremely successful year anyway with two parts from The Unprofitable and an impressive but rather divisively received Richard III. About Angels in America everyone agreed Oostpool outdid itself.
#3 Sonnevanck/Silbersee, We go on a bear hunt youth/musical theatre
A remarkable number of classic children's books found their way into the theatre this year. None as unlikely as We go on a bear hunt, after Michael Rosen's picture book with endless repetition. Leave it to Flora Verbrugge to turn this very thing into one of the most exciting theatre performances of the year, with a constantly surprising set and impressive singing and acting performances by Silbersee.
#4 The National Opera, Rheims trip opera/youth
Simultaneous adult Il viaggo a Reims The National Opera also performed a witty adaptation of Rossini's opera for young people. Arguably the production with the most froth on stage this year. Unfortunately only seen three times, and purely in Amsterdam. Catching up throughout the Netherlands please, really.
#5 Musical theatre company BOT, The sound of glass music/location theatre
The only production that cannot have a reprise and at the same time can last for many more editions. BOT makes a unique form of site-specific theatre in disappearing industrial and urban heritage. This has already resulted in many fine performances, but The sound of glass, played on one of the hottest days of the past year, precisely in one of the last remaining greenhouses of Lent (now part of Nijmegen), none of those present will soon forget. Abandoned buildings and spaces are often overgrown, but nowhere as beautifully as in a greenhouse.
Next year, BOT is going mega, by using an entire power plant as a venue. We are already looking forward to it. Although that will require adding at least one performance to the playlist, as it is already practically sold out.
#6 Micha Wertheim, For themselves cabaret
Micha Wertheim made it perfectly clear why he thanked for being nominated for our country's premier cabaret award. That he should have won it for For themselves is indisputable, whatever other curious criteria a jury may apply. Cabaret often disrupts, but Wertheim goes many times further, single-handedly inventing a new theatre genre. Or maybe not. Just try to find out. Without a trailer, because even Wertheim doesn't do that.
#7 Theatre South Pole, Empedokles stage
Flemish South Pole impressed in the Netherlands this year with All too loud loneliness and above all Empedokles. The company has a penchant for rarely performed or radically adapted plays, where the text is always central. We see this form of theatre far too rarely in the Netherlands, where it is too often all about the ironic wink or magnification, ferocious gestures and very physical acting. And what actresses Sofie Declair, Kaat Hellings, Katrin Lohmann and Sarah Eisa seated ability is downright impressive.
#8 Kwatta/Gnaffel, Pear trees bloom white youth/puppet theatre
Puppet theatre boring? Outdated entertainment for small children that has since been made boring by bad and very good 3D animations (Pixar) are ruined? Gnaffel has been proving for years from Zwolle that puppet theatre is anything but corny. Not only through a moving performance about dementia (Oma, mag ik mijn pop terug), but certainly in the puppet theatre made together with Kwatta Pear trees bloom white, which centres on a car accident and suicide as well as a little dog, without getting leaden for a moment.
#9 Chamber opera house, Farewell to the senses classical/theatre
The Requiem by Fauré is often heard, even in churches. But Sjoeke-Marije Wallendal consistently makes extremely effective use of Zwolle's Plantagekerk in her direction. In eighty minutes, soloists, choir, orchestra, and audience become one unit, inseparable parts of an intimate and moving rituel de mort that connects young and old, professionals, amateurs and young talents. A production that multiple reprises deserves.
#10 Holland Opera, Redhead opera/youth
One of many fairy tales that found its way to the theatre this year. The Noord Nederlands Toneel, together with Club Guy & Roni, came up with the fantastic anti-fairy tale Snow White, but even better was Redhead by Holland Opera. Blues, rock and classical come together in a fairytale opera in which everything resembles the over-familiar Redhead, but which digs much deeper and is simultaneously scary and unimaginably funny. Not on tour until 2017.
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