Shakespeare lives and comes from Utrecht

The less real theatre is, the better it works. That insight dawned on me again this weekend, in Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg. Twice, in fact. Friday with the reprise of Aluin's Twelfth Night, Saturday with Koning Krump, the masterpiece by Het Nut. Two Utrecht groups, once originating from the same theatre school, and drunk in the same theatre bar, where yours truly emptied his wallet in the nineties. So I am not entirely objective.

Shakespeare was the connecting factor between Het Nut and Aluin this weekend. Twelfth Night is a version of Shakespeare's most brilliant comedy retold by Ayden Carlo and in King Krump, writer Jibbe Willems takes a stab at the eternity value that so naturally attaches to the four-hundred-year-old bard from Stratford-upon-Avon. 

Maligned

Whether Willems will succeed, of course, we won't know for four hundred years. His work, like Shakespeare, will first have to be reviled, forgotten, resurfaced, adapted to the times, rediscovered and retranslated by then. And even then. Maybe he'll need an Alum then. Or Ayden Carlo. 

A comedy like Tweltfth Night was never meant for eternity. It was once performed rather once at a dinner party at a London law school (Middle Temple) and is almost never played in the Netherlands. That is conceivable if you take in the play in its sanitised, nineteenth-century version. That is a version that mainly emphasises the o-la-la character of the play, in a carnivalesque setting. 

Ayden Carlo took it upon himself to give the play a queer twist, and some people thought that meant a great adaptation to the new yakkes-woke and guttegut-what-not. There are those who get pimples from that, but the performance only brings out what Twelfth Night had been all about since 1600. I know the original text rather inside and out, and it was a delight to see and hear how the 400-plus-year-old jokes struck a new target with a young and contemporary audience.

Deliberately diffuse

Twelfth Night, originally titled Twelve Night and better known here by its misguided title 'Epiphany', is the play in which Shakespeare took the British rule that women's roles had to be played by men to subject of the story made. Night blurs the gaze and sharpens the senses. A girl (played by a man) dresses up as a man, and in that role acts in the service of a duke as a love messenger between him and the grieving Olivia. Both noble people fall madly in love with the boy and do not want to share him. 

The audience always sees the role, not the actor, but in this play, the writer plays with that convention. The play gains power when it remains diffuse as to what the real identity of the characters is. The text thematises that, and that makes this comedy different from all other English plays of the time, in which it was perfectly normal for women's roles to be played by actors. After all, in the theatre, the audience simply sees the role and does not care what hangs between the performer's legs. In Twelfth Night, actors play with their roles. This is a four-hundred-year-old innovation, as the first reference to gender-diverse eroticism in modern Western theatre. (Source)

Anyway, long story short: reteacher Ayden Carlo saw that deliberate vagueness and gave it all the space it needed. Whatever is man, woman or whatever, the reteacher delicately tosses about. Director Victorine Plante found a cast equally diverse, rebirthing Shakespeare as new, right down to the historical songs in a new instrumentation. Shakespeare's comedies were musical theatre, and that is what Utrecht-based Alum makes of them. It refers more to Orkater than Stage Entertainment, and that too is historically accurate. 

Haughtiness

Now the English bard did not write for eternity. Nothing so fleeting as theatre, after all. It is especially lucky that we still know his work. That Jibbe Willems, as a writer at least as prolific as his historical example, does pursue eternity with King Krump can therefore be called overconfident, if not haughty. Requesting the gods, perhaps. 

Since we cannot look ahead four hundred years, we can already give monumental status to the play that premiered 5 October 2024. The text about King Krump ascending the throne of Kamerica by diabolical powers in the person of one 'Annon' at the expense of one Billary and being overthrown at the hands of his wife Kelania is bursting with 'Easter eggs': more or less hidden references to current political events. It is not a direct satire on today's America, but you can enjoy it as an inky and at times rather despondent commentary on the rise of populism. And some of the references are frightening accurate. In our podcast is also about this.

Company culture

With this, director Greg Nottrot takes his first step on the big stages of the Netherlands. So the man who grew up with informal location performances where you could eat and especially drink a lot, trades in that modern version of Shakespeare's 'Middle Temple' for the expensive corporate culture of the big city theatres. That does complicate things. In a theatre, as a maker, you are a guest, whereas on your own location, you can bend everything to your will.

The premiere lacked the looseness that is typical of Het Nut. The cast, impressively cast, does go at it nicely, and despite the somewhat static, chess-like mis-en-scène, the play remains effervescent. This is due to the language of Jibbe Willems, who is eagerly playing Shakespeare, and also to Nottrot's enthusiasm as director. The entire cast is in great spirits, and that radiates out to the audience.

Its strongest point is the music. Very Shakespearean too: musical theatre as Shakespeare established it in the British did not, like today's musicals, emerge from operetta. In Shakespeare's comedies, music and singing was a necessary and meaning-bearing interlude somewhat separate from the narrative. This is how Aluin showed in Twelfth Night, this is how Het Nut applies music now. Two musicians stand on the sidelines, as garbage collector, classical Greek choir and narrator. They fill the soundtrack, first with upbeat hillbilly sounds, and as the piece progresses increasingly dark gothic metal. It swings, it's loud, it overwhelms, it drags you in. 

Red fabric

That this performance also abandons realism is another plus. The metres of red fabric pulled from trousers and vests are at least as gruesome, if not more gruesome, than the real pig's blood that has been flowing at a leading company like ITA for the past 25 years. 

Because that is how this theatre scores, just like 400 years ago: no matter how grand you tackle it, ultimately the greatest drama takes place in the mind of the spectator. They don't need realism. Indeed, visual realism breaks down the drama. That is the classic teaching moment of this weekend in Utrecht. Shakespeare is alive, because theatre is timeless.