Actually, it was too bad to persevere. Perhaps I should indeed have followed my impulse to walk away hard, but I stayed with Kein Licht. Indeed, this play, written by Elfriede Jelinek, composed by Philippe Manoury and directed by Nicolas Stemann, was technically quite good. Only that little dog, I so did not like that.
Putting animals and children on stage is generally seen as an artistic weakness. After all, their innocence is not played, but real, and real always attracts more attention than fake. And so putting an animal or child on stage turns everything you put around it as art into bad fakes.
Through marrow and bone
The little dog in Kein Licht is an adorable French terrier, type Bobby from Tintin, who can sing most endearingly. I myself have a one-year-old puppy, Fonzie, who can do the same. A good singing dog knows how to go through marrow, and through marrow, when he wants to go out, or eat, or to the neighbour's bitch in heat, or just has weltschmerz. The French Bobby in Kein Licht can do it on command, loves it immensely, because there's always a treat to follow one of his arias, too.
So far, sweet and heartwarming. Philippe Manoury, the acclaimed French composer who set to music Jelinek's not-so-optimistic piece about our deadly addiction to energy, has nefarious plans for Bobby. Because after electronics have multiplied the little dog, the orchestra and a choir add some dramatic punch to the proceedings, there is suddenly that image of Fukushima. You remember, that nuclear power plant that exploded after the tsunami following that earthquake in 2011. And that 170,000 people had to leave their homes in a hurry. And that many pets were left behind. Crying, lonely, hungry.
Three years, an eternity ago
Call me a wimp, but I can't stand that. Then I want to leave the room in pain, because it really hurts and that pain murders me for whatever else happens. Then I want to go home and pet Fonzie until he is fed up (rarely).
Does that leave anything? We can now add the lemma 'topicality' to the no-goes for artists, alongside animals and children. Because you won't win from current affairs as an artist either, if it gets too close.
There are three years in the official title: 2011, 2012 and 2017. Jelinek wrote the first two in response to the Fukushima disaster (during and a year later, with those poor little dogs). Part three is in response to Trump's election in 2016. The revival for this Holland Festival, in 2022, after not being played for five years, couldn't be done without an epilogue that was about 2022, Steman told us prior to the performance. After all, crisis, pandemic, war. Quite a lot has happened since 2017.
Current events are always quicker
That update actually made the whole show suddenly more dated than it already was. After all, you can never really catch current events because they are always quicker and closer than you can write. The water tanks (which used to represent the 300 tonnes of radioactive water that spills out of the Fukushima power plant every day) turned into the two-colour of Ukraine, the text about Trump turned out to reflect outdated insight ("he doesn't feel like it any more") and that we are all going to die, in itself, you don't need to hammer it in again.
The Ukrainian soloist, who after the final applause was allowed to plead for continued attention to the ongoing war in her homeland, did not say this to deaf ears. However, a piece like Kein Licht, in which every note and every letter is imbued with the inescapable doom of us all, ultimately overshadows itself, precisely because the doom described is now descending upon us.
Once home, Fonzie got an extra tasty treat. Also for Ukraine.
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