With text, movement, actors, sets.
Writer and theatre-maker Nhung Dam (38) tried to be as Dutch as possible, but is increasingly embracing her Vietnamese roots. Because these are precisely what make her unique, she now realises, and offer a wealth of stories. Including for her second novel, Definition of Love. Two worlds Nhung Dam (38) more or less grew up in two worlds. Her cradle was in...
"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...
In mid-March, I went to see the Toneelmakerij's Hamlet, a performance specially made in and for Amsterdam-West. I had some questions about that performance, I wrote in the review, and we would discuss those questions in a podcast with Abdelkader Benali, the adaptor of the text, and Paul Knieriem, the director. An hour and a half before the recording...
On Wednesday 9 May, the Royal Couple on Terschelling will get an exclusive sneak preview of the show Sâlt, which Tryater is bringing to Oerol in the summer. The couple will visit Terschelling in a tour of the Wadden Islands. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will be informed about the main topics in an extensive programme. Of course, Terschelling's Oerol is part of the visit:...
We have a huge need for magic and a miracle in our time. Some people think you lose that when you grow up and/or have children, but nothing could be further from the truth, of course. And in case you had any doubts, I would wish that more theatre makers for adults would revisit the magic that you still had in your childhood...
This year's Charlotte Köhler Prize, a triennial award for writers of prose, poetry or drama, has been awarded to Peer Wittenbols (1965). Wittenbols receives the €15,000 prize for his entire oeuvre and in particular for the youth-oriented play Trojan Wars (2020). The jury consisted of theatre scholar Sruti Bala, actor, writer and director Gable Roelofsen and...
'Broos' opens as a kind of cruel game show, with lead actress Lottie Hellingman in the middle of the stage, sitting on a chair above which hangs a large, grey rock. "I took happiness for granted," she begins resignedly. Hellingman's words are by director Madeleine Matzer. She wrote them down for 'Broos' after hearing a mother of a 17-year-old daughter with Down syndrome say
I had to think for a while before I wrote something about the Hamlet performance that is now showing to an audience of mostly high school students in Amsterdam West. That was because I was sitting in the auditorium, on a legendarily uncomfortable stand in a fine fringe breeding ground, among a schoolchildren's audience that sat watching in full attention for almost two hours, while at...
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...
Broos is an emotional and musical theatre production by MATZER Theatre Productions with Lottie Hellingman, touring the Netherlands from 30 March to 16 June. The story is about Kyra, an adventurous woman who has a special girl named Romy, who needs extra care. The show highlights the challenging and beautiful sides of a care story and how you can lose yourself in caring for another person. The show is enhanced by live music by Helge Slikker and debuts at the Bossche Verkadefabriek on 31 March.
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.
On 11 June 2023, the Holland Festival will host the Dutch premiere of the British 5-star musical theatre production Wuthering Heights at DeLaMar in Amsterdam. One of London's most influential directors, Emma Rice, adapted Emily Brontë's literary masterpiece into a fiery theatrical experience, with live music, humour, puppetry and dance. Wuthering Heights received rave reviews in London and is touring on this...
"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, dramaturge 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...
Do we really dare to question our prejudices? Or have we become too politically correct? What can we learn from the silent voice? Framen Yara's Wedding is an interdisciplinary (almost) musical directed by Guy Weizman, with lyrics by Antigone Akgün, Rasit Elibol, Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini and Rik van den Bos. Together, this unique group of writers, inspired by the...
So it wasn't really that long ago that a world-famous composer could tell his 20-year-old lover to stop composing because he couldn't stand competition. And for her to do just that. It is a detail in the history of Gustav and Alma Mahler, long known to insiders, but which...
After the successful show 'You can tell me a secret' about the different sides of dementia, MATZER Theatre Productions now presents a new production: Broos. A musical and moving performance with Lottie Hellingman about how you can lose yourself in caring for someone else. The show, written and directed by Madeleine Matzer, will premiere on Friday 31 March....
QUEERING PUPPETS FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM 28 March to 2 April 2023 Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam has provided a stage for genre-transcending forms of visual theatre and puppetry since 2022. A fusion of craft and technology, dissolving traditional categories before the eye of the beholder. Plein Theater and Puppetry Workspace defy the norm with this festival full of garish visual excesses from...
Someday, the diversity of theatre and the audiences it attracts will be fine. On Thursday, 16 February, I sat in The Hague's Theater aan het Spui in an auditorium that was on average 50 years younger than the average theatre audience and also had all the colours of the rainbow. You guessed it: youth theatre. The theatre where...
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 heavily traumatised...
Sometimes you suddenly discover a gem of culture, banished from playlists by the tough theatre market. Like Wil van der Meer with his French chanson programme of translated songs by Annie Schmidt. As an actor, singer, director and teacher, Wil van der Meer is not first rate, but equally indispensable to Dutch culture. The countless, indispensable roles...
Jacqueline Blom and Mark Rietman immediately arouse laughter and sadness as desperate children of divorced parents at the beginning of Family Game. However, the sharp tragicomedy gradually becomes more of a farce good for an evening of laughter. In Family Play, Jacqueline Blom, Bas Hoeflaak and Annick Boer show their best side as actors, and I enjoyed the...
Grieving well for the loss of a loved one does not lead to Prozac or a shrink. On the contrary, a little life skill helps, as in 'Grief is the thing with feathers' by Max Porter, Jacob Derwig and Erik Whien. Once, after tragedy struck my family, I used to console myself by reading aloud the picture book Frog and the Little Bird by Max...
Director Alida Dors is pushing for inclusion at Theatre Rotterdam. What does this mean for a 44-year-old white director with great success with traditional audiences, as now with 'Sadness is the thing with feathers'? A Q&A. "Erik Whien's theatre is all about the human being. About the head and everything that happens in it. Every human being has thoughts, in the mind...
Before, when I used to write about theatre for a national morning paper, my travel schedule was partly determined by the reach the paper had in a particular region. So, if I necessarily wanted to write about a theatre performance in Enschede, about Enschedean states, my chief's question was: how many subscribers do we have in Twente? So usually it didn't get there
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