Freelance journalist, doet interviews en wetenschap voor Intermediair; schrijft en spreekt over onder meer digitalisering, data-analyse, fraude en media voor dagbladen/congressen; recenseert toneel; en is dagelijks dankbaar.
Tobogganing teenagers. If you don't have them at home, you read and hear about them in the media. The phone provides them with thousands of impressions a day, but the constant in history remained: for Generation Z, little attracts attention as much as sex. Or Sex? This language question begins the performance by HNTjong, the youth company of Het Nationale Toneel in Den...
A major musical theatre performance, an adapted classical play, an opera and a painting festival. The small municipality of Noordwijk - like that other coastal municipality of Bergen - offers an abundance of culture. All four events rely heavily on talent, subsidies and donations, volunteers, pragmatic thrift. And good weather. Noordwijk aan Zee has been a more than average municipality for centuries. Famous Dutchmen...
Respect for the many resistance fighters against slavery connects Romana Peace in 'Time will teach us' with anger at 'the system' in which exploitation continues, and with the pains in her personal life. Lokay, a teenager still, flees from the plantation on St Maarten, is caught again and physically punished by the white owner: a breast cut off, she bled almost to death in hellish...
Heads fly together of practically educated old members of an association on the Weteringseplas where a driven entrepreneur comes to test floating homes, under local government siding with sustainability or the new money. On the car radio on the way to the performance, NPO Klassiek showed a Q&A with excellent biographer Sjeng Scheijen about choreographer Hans van...
Christelijke culturele tradities, zoals het Katholicisme, zitten in het verdomhoekje. Hoe komen ze eruit? Hoe je achtergronden qua gender, afkomst en overtuiging ook noemt, deze allemaal positief bezien helpt, met mededogen en humor; hoe mooi en grappig zijn al die verschillende mensen en uitingen! Dus schrijf ik nu met genoegen over twee personen die op de cultuurladder klommen, en net…
I saw Sid Vicious perform with the Sex Pistols at the illustrious Eksit in Rotterdam in 1977, more than 45 years later my teenage daughter toured Vicious's story in International Toneel Amsterdam's performance Hamlet and Ophelia. She still has a life to go, I immersed myself in memories. A (too long) look back According to the annals...
"Another happy day. He listens to me ...Another very happy day, he speaks to me." Life reduced to its essence, with Winnie towering womanishly above the human molehill for her final episode. Antoinette Jelgersma, in Happy Days under Erik Whien, portrays a more monty version of Winnie, one of the toughest stage roles, with a monologue sitting still...
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. Whereupon the victim confirms the doom himself. Who gets to sign off on this apotheosis we will leave in the middle because of the spoiler. The crazy thing is, no terrible shockwave goes through the well-filled...
Toneelgroep Maastricht has created a contemporary version of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Garden. The edgy actors, starring Anniek Pheifer as Lyuba, make the show a comedy, but the tragic elements are not ignored.
"That's what I'm going to tell Nina first, that afterwards the young women were the first to stand up and applaud and yell with enthusiasm for our Coriolanus." Remco van Rijn, dramaturg at The National Theatre, speaking after a try-out, just before the premiere of Coriolanus on 18 February. And Nina = Nina Spijkers, the original director of the play What...
At the end of the premiere at Haarlem's Stadsschouwburg, actor Huub Stapel (68) fills up several times as he talks about his parents. Silence falls. The performance Only Family is mainly a tribute to Stapel's parents from memories and reflections, but also personal confessions. The most prominent being his urinary problem due to a too-small bladder; many...
Assault and finally rape of a 14-year-old girl by a bonkers vet. An enjoyable evening at the theatre is different, until the applause of this arguably (once again) best Dutch theatre production of the year relieves you of the harsh struggle. Author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and director Ivo van Hove emphasise that both 49-year-old vet Kurt and his minion, the farmer's daughter, are severely traumatised...
Soms ontdek je ineens een pareltje van de cultuur, door de harde theatermarkt verbannen van de speellijsten. Zoals Wil van der Meer met zijn Franse chansonprogramma van vertaalde liedjes van Annie Schmidt. Wil van der Meer is als acteur, zanger, regisseur en docent niet het eerste garnituur, maar even zo goed onmisbaar voor de Nederlandse cultuur. De talloze, onmisbare rollen…
Jacqueline Blom en Mark Rietman wekken direct de lachlust en treurnis op als vertwijfelde kinderen van gescheiden ouders aan het begin van Famiespel. De scherpe tragikomedie wordt echter allengs meer een klucht die goed is voor een avondje lachen. In Familiespel tonen Jacqueline Blom, Bas Hoeflaak en Annick Boer zich van hun beste kant als acteurs, en genoot ik het…
Goed rouwen om het verlies van een dierbare leidt niet naar Prozac of een zielenknijper. Integendeel, een beetje levenskunst helpt, zoals in ‘Verdriet is het ding met veren’ van Max Porter, Jacob Derwig en Erik Whien. Nadat vroeger eens een tragedie m’n familie trof, troostte ik me met het voorlezen van het prentenboek Kikker en het Vogeltje voor van Max…
Directeur Alida Dors zet bij Theater Rotterdam in op inclusie. Wat betekent dit voor een 44-jarige witte regisseur met groot succes met een traditioneel publiek, zoals nu met ‘Verdriet is het ding met veren’? Een vraaggesprek. “Het theater van Erik Whien draait om de mens. Om het hoofd en alles wat daarin gebeurt. Elk mens heeft gedachten, in de geest…
Squeezing village society and family, escape with harsh deflowering, student pleasures crushed by bloody abortion, inescapable marriage and childbearing, scorching relationships with men, fierce longing with loneliness, and finally resignation with grandchild; against the backdrop of war, reconstruction, stifled revolution, years of hope and finally in prosperity and cynicism extinguished idealism. Time flows through Annie, Annie flows through the...
Jeroen Spitzenberger lets New Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra shine So typically Rotterdam is this performance, just right, because of the space the lauded actor grants to a rather unknown 11-member male orchestra. For weeks, we happily watch Spitzenberger as Tim in the excellent TV series Oogappels, just as we intensely enjoyed The Year of Fortuyn at the same NPO in which he (also)...
The night of the sweet-soft child's voice of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, of course; but also the night of Joke van Leeuwen; of Maria Farantouri and Mikis Theodorakis; of 'illusory poet' Hans Klok even; and of the families of Nisrine Mbarki and Ivo de Wijs. I will try to explain the latter in a moment, in my unpoetic style, forgive me. On my...
On 8 October 2022, ILFU will organise the Night of Poetry in Utrecht for the 39th time already. It is almost sold out which means that two-thirds of the cost is borne by visitors. "The night costs roughly 100,000 euros. If we sell out, the vast majority of the revenue already comes from tickets and about a third...
Stoppen of doorgaan tot je er bij doodvalt? En kun je op de ander bouwen? Serieuze levensvragen die gelegenheidsduo Peter Blok en Bas Hoeflaak vanaf een trapeze in de nok van hun circus grappend en grollend tot een antwoord brengen. De droge humor en smoelwerken van Peter Blok (ervaren toneel-, film- en tv-acteur) en van acteur-cabaretier Bas Hoeflaak (Sluipschutters) zijn…
What magnificent beauty of Dutch language from Tom Lanoye! What greatness of stage by Theu Boermans! What great acting by Romana Vrede, Mark Rietman and Myrthe Huber! Three hours of enjoyment at the very highest level that culture has to offer. And then the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague is not even sold out on a Saturday night. Did the big...
Few actors can portray timidity as aptly as Jan-Paul Buijs. With his wonderful Circus Treurdier, he made a catchy performance that anyone who has something against big mouths should enjoy. Especially at chat show tables and on Twitter, but also with the incessant smattering of columns in the Volkskrant; the big mouths of the betwetervolk exert a power that you...
Giving up a loved one poisons bodies, which then repel each other. Is there consolation for pain from cruelty? About a thousand children under 20 die every year, most of them babies. And 600 people die in traffic, thankfully far fewer than before, but more since 1945 than in the Holocaust. There are no collective commemorations for it, bereaved families often suffer in...
From this week, try-outs of Poison, about an ex-couple who lost a child, are playing. After the premiere on 19 February in Leiden, as many as 70 performances will follow throughout the country. Actor Stefan de Walle is ready for it. The wonderful play Gif by Lot Vekemans has been performed in 21 shows since its premiere in 2009 at NTGent under Johan Simons,...
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