oude meuk

Theaterfestival 2000

Lulled to Sleep, by Aurèle Parisien

I should say straight out that I don't understand Dutch and that this is my first time in Amsterdam. In other words, the whole city is for me a glorious piece of theatre within which the plays of the festival are simply further acts and the dramatis personae on stage compete with those sitting in the cafes and passing me in the narrow lanes. The first thing I did on arriving from Montreal yesterday morning was to go for a walk. I ended up, quite by accident but, as it turns out, quite fortuitously, at the Gallery of Civic Guards outside the Amsterdams Historisch Museum.

I say fortuitously because it was the perfect preparation for seeing Toneelgroep Amsterdam's production 'De Cid'. I had some other preparation as well, since I am here by invitation with an international group of critics and, in the afternoon, we were given a presentation on the work of Toneelgroep Amsterdam by some members of the company. Dramaturg Dirkje Houtman mentioned in passing that the translator had preserved the alexandrines of Corneille's poetry - a proposition that would strike anyone who has been in Amsterdam for half a day as completely preposterous since Dutch words seem three times longer than those of French and with a completely incompatible cadence. Seeing 'Le Cid' in a language I don't understand at the end of a long day on which I am suffering from transatlantic jetlag was not an enticing prospect.

The opening of Gerardjan Rijnders' production was far from reassuring: static, aesthetically formal, even dour. I could not tell if the text was being rendered in allexandrines but the (for me) meaningless rythms, slow gestures, and muted lighting, soon lulled me to sleep. What did this have to do with the wild, punky, collective creations we had seen on the Toneelgroep Amsterdam video in the afternoon?

The funny thing about Dutch is that, while it sounds nothing like French, it's cadence and intonation does sound almost exactly like English. So, given the jetlag, I often found myself in a semi-dream state where I could swear I undestood what was being said. Granted, I could not remember a passage in 'Le Cid' where Jimena talks about going to a fishmonger to see a movie but I could swear that was what she was saying.

The other disconcerting thing was that I remembered 'Le Cid' as an annoyingly bombastic bit of Romanticism that did not have a single funny line in it and yet everyone in the theatre was laughing quite often. Sometimes this obviously had to do with the exagerated, ridiculous, even slapstick gestures or expressions of the actors but often it had to do with how a particular line was being delivered. And this, of course, was beyond my grasp and so both frustrating and intriguing.

The second half started to look more like what I expected from Rijnders. The costumes started deconstructing into an anachronistic mixture of contemporary street clothes, Don Fernando's attendants became more and more like gay prostitutes, and the delivery seemed to be fluctuating more wildly from the formal rhetoric of Corneille to what sounded like colloquial Amsterdam.

So what did I make of all this in my non-comprehending, semi-comatose stupor? This is where the civil guard portraits from my morning walk come in. For from the very opening scene the production struck me as completely Dutch. As Don Diego and Don Gomez stood laconically on stage tritely bickering with each other in their timeless ruffles, they held absurdly huge swords that they could barely lift. How like the so-called guardsmen in the Gallery, so self-satisfied, obsessed with status, and promiscuously displaying the opulent arms they were wealthy enough to purchase.

The overall atmosphere of Rijnders' 'De Cid' is one of pathetic lethargy and moral spinelessness. Rodrigo, made thoroughly contemporary, seems like a nice enough guy who is buffeted reluctantly by social expectations from act to act, knowing he is doing the wrong thing (or perhaps just an inconvinient thing) but without the backbone to do differently. Don Fernando, the symbol of civil authority, slumps ever more apathetically into his throne and, by the end, literally gives up the ghost.

Despite it's weaknesses, Rijnders effectively uses 'Le Cid' as a canvas on which to paint his own viciously critical portrait of Dutch society. I wandered the streets of Amsterdam after the show and as I stood at a phone box in Dam Square at 1 AM someone who looked very much like one of Don Fernando's attendants persisted in trying to sell me what he insisted was the best possible cocaine. And two bicycle policemen, ignoring the prowling drug dealers, rode onto the sidewalk to give a ticket to a man who was standing nearby pissing against a wall. He shrugged non-challantly like Don Fernando and chatted amicably with the officers while they wrote out the fine.

Aurèle Parisien
Aurèle Parisien is a freelance theatre critic in Montreal. He is attending the festival as part of a seminar organized by the International Association of Theatre Critics.