They are often somewhat tragic characters in classic novels: the artist or scientist who sacrifices everything to create The Work Over All and goes down ingloriously as a result. Pride comes before a fall, we think. Rather work all your life to perfect one wave than create the definitive piece about everything. Don't make yourself bigger than you are.
This kind of humility is wasted on Eric de Vroedt, artistic director of The National Theatre. Indeed, creating the definitive piece about everything is a hobby for him. On Saturday 28 June, his latest version of the definitive play about everything premiered at the Holland Festival. The Seasons is, after 10 episodes Mightysociety and six episodes of The Nation, a marathon that passed the test with four episodes in seven hours with flying colours.
Refined
The mega-project, an adaptation of the four books 'Autumn', 'Winter', 'Spring' and 'Summer' that Ali Smith wrote together in record time, does exactly what a definitive piece about these times should do: overwhelm. De Vroedt does not achieve that with trays of light and teringhertrie from an overpowered sound system. Could have been, earlier during this festival the ROHTKO from Riga did that with great conviction, but what The National Theatre does now is more refined.
First of all: sensible people had already decided that Ali Smith's four, highly associative novels moulded together do not lend themselves to a stage adaptation. But those are sensible people and Eric De Vroedt is mostly ambitious. So he took up machete and pritt pen himself to create something that would make the meandering and time-jumping works with dozens of characters manageable for eight actors and two musicians.
Perfectly British
Including eating, drinking, and peeing breaks, they are on stage for seven hours and, with their eager ensemble playing, take you on a journey through time, and torn lives of recent history so frighteningly similar to past disasters. Smith took as his starting point the time between Brexit referendum and Coronapandemic, De Vroedt made the right decision by not changing anything about that timeframe and the British nature of the performance. It is precisely the alienation that brings current events into the theatre.
What helps even more to make the performance topical and inescapable are the actors. All of them are worth mentioning, Hein van der Heijden as a wonderfully light, spirit floating through time, Antoinette Jelgersma who takes steerage to great heights, Esther Scheldwacht who even now plays a schoolgirl effortlessly, while Betty Schuurman is so good she deserves a bigger role opposite the millennial despair of Joris Smit, alongside Nur Dabagh who portrays a grandiose hyper-intelligent adolescent and Mariana Aparicio who confirms her position as the youthful grande dame of the National Theatre with a super-energetic performance.
June Yanez
Special mention deserves June Yanez. The young actress fascinates from her first appearance with her versatility and humour. Her charisma keeps you watching, and she can switch between the subtlest nuances. Whether it is a child who is first 6, then 8, then 13 and then 31: with bitterly little effort, you see the metamorphosis happening before your eyes. And then she can sing, too. Yanez is a very big one and can only get bigger. I understood that she has now been bought out of The Hague by Amsterdam competitors. Too bad for The Hague, but let's hope she gets the opportunity to grow much bigger at ITA.
Now she offers De Vroedt the opportunity - with Hein van der Heijden's musical experience and Betty Schuurman's musical Hollandia past - to make the show appealing to quite a wide audience.
Meanwhile, we are already looking forward to the next definitive piece on everything from Eric de Vroedt.
