There are plenty of reasons to severely condemn Disney for Bambi. How many four-year-olds have had to sit through that cartoon in thick tears because of the saddest goodbye in the world? How much trauma did that cause and should that not be included in the DSM-V?
Reason enough for Maas Theatre and Dance to enable a different look at farewell for once. To add something of comfort to what seems irreparable in the eyes of a four-year-old. So the Rotterdam youth theatre company created the performance ‘Say goodbye’. About saying goodbye. Of that one friend, your grandfather or that familiar place. So it says in the announcement, and so for a moment I was afraid that after 15 minutes I would be sitting in the auditorium among inconsolably roaring toddlers. But nothing of the sort.
All liquid
The three performers in Say Goodbye, Romano Haynes, Gianni Noten and Julius Schraven, make every effort to talk about comfort above all else. Creator Sara Giampaolo was guided by the theme of ‘water’ when conceiving. This means that everything in the performance is fluid: the movements, the music, the acting, and - in a way - the set. This turns out to be an ingenious piece of origami, a grotesque-sized pop-up book that allows the performers to disappear and reappear at will.
Because in the end, that's what it's all about: if something disappears, sooner or later something always comes back in its place. Not the same, but different. And yet the same again. So this hour of farewell theatre is, after all, mostly about comfort.
Good thing the one little cuddly toy they play with doesn't have beady eyes. With eyes, I wouldn't have been able to keep mine dry either.
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