The Navertellers play music until they drop dead

Just before the end of the performance, one of the musicians steps forward, whereupon a colleague tells him: he is dying soon, metastatic bladder cancer. To which the victim confirms the ominous message himself.

Who may draw this apotheosis we will leave in the middle because of the spoiler. Funny thing is, no terrible shockwave goes through the well-filled Leiden Schouwburg on this Sunday afternoon after this announcement. It's part of it, it seems, however serious.

Because we then just spent an hour and a half listening to tales of escapes from woeful death by six long-time musicians and theatre-makers: quintuple heart attack (Toon Agterberg), fall down stairs with broken neck (Rob Boonzajer Flaes), incurable leukaemia (Eddie Wahr), a liver cirrhosis after junkie existence (Kees van der Vooren), to even a fall into ravine resulting in coma and frostbite (pianist Paul Rhenen). With the 'dissonant', finally, accordionist Terts Brinkhoff who alerted an ambulance three times for what turned out to be merely hyperventilation.

Irregular

The motley crew of friends who have seen death in the eye tours theatres irregularly. 'During corona time, I got the idea to start this, we had nothing to do anyway. We got together, started telling stories and, above all, making music. That's how a one-and-a-half-hour programme grew,' Rob Boonzajer says after the Leiden performance. Before the sextet took the trip back to North Holland in two vans with their eighteen instruments.

Booking performances for a next season they just didn't do it, because the chances of being on stage in this composition are not that great. Until the fatal announcement at the end, you gradually think that after so much medical luck, this company has eternal life hanging from its ass. Not so.

And so this little story has to come. In memory of these men, their stories, but above all their intensely played music. They show what we already know about the oldies who play the stars after a rough life into old age, from Keith Richards to Dolly Parton.

300 years

Or, in the words of Adriaan van Dis about The Navertellers: 'They don't complain. No, they sing and play the plaster off the ceiling despite their half-healed broken bones, chemotherapy and pills. I watched and listened with open mouth, and was especially moved.'

Wonderful name too, 'The Navertellers', together accounting for over 300 years of stage experience. 'Survivors' was so obvious, but no, they were almost dead. Thanks to Rob Boonzajer's idea - also blessed with a wonderful dry humour - they can 'still tell the tale'.

To us, who need to know, the end is approaching. Make the most of it while you still can!