From mars men to twelve-year-old would-be gangstertjes: what you don’t want to miss at half past four in the morning at the Oerol island festival

Oerol lets you do crazy things. Like getting up in the middle of the night to sit on the beach with a thick sweater and winter coat to greet the rose -wife dawn. PeerGroup opened the theater festival Oerol, which is at various locations on Terschelling, on Friday morning at half past four with their performance Amphidroom.

From the branding, Kai (Olaf Malmberg) comes up, with an urn with: the ashes of his deceased friend Rahim. In excerpts the story of a love between two opposites comes up. The desire of Kai clashed with the feeling of freedom of Iraqi Rahim. Unfortunately, all emotions are expressed fairly explicitly. Kai repeatedly mentions the gap in his heart. It makes Amphidroom How one -dimensional.

But! In the early morning seeing the sun as an orange -red ball standing up behind the sea is a gift. All the more wonderful that this performance has no association whatsoever with the nocturnal time. It makes you feel a bit cheated – before you dive into your bed again.

Fortunately, the Friday morning also offered the spectacular premiere of Cloth for bleeding From the Nut, which almost forgot the visitor the burning sun on the first tropical day of the year. George Tobal, writer of the play, tells from the stands how he met the homeless Willem and turned his troubled life into a performance, after which he introduces the actors. Later, the characters in turn address the writer on his « poverty peep show ».

That open approach gives air to an exemplary written, intense drama about a boy put on the street, becomes addicted and, despite the use of a tireless social worker, does not seem to save: the regulations are Krankjorem and his mental state hopeless. The facts that pass emphasize the absurdities about housing shortage, debt restructuring and the guidance costs of homeless people.

The four actors (Yasmina Abdelmoumen, Michiel Blankwaardt, Kiki van Deursen and Milan Serkeris) form a harmonious whole with weathered performances. William’s mother, with her polonaise to men and Igor, Wilems friend on the street, become full characters. And there is music that accurately connects to Willem’s experience. When Willem and Igor take drugs and Igor ‘Stairway to Heaven’, every user knows how where it is that drugs offer the illusion of a staircase to heaven, and how dangerous that is.

Parental failure

A thematic related performance is Runner From Orkater, played and written by Patrick Ribeiro. Also in Runner A boy touches on drift due to parental failure, but that absence has horrible consequences. Ribeiro tells how perpetrators of sexual violence come to their crime.

With a mountain of sand as a background and accompanied by the urban sounds of musician Jornt Bras, Ribeiro talks about growing up in Oudeland, a poor neighborhood in the Rotterdam district Hoogvliet. His parents ignore him, but he has friends who take care of him. Those friends are twelve-year-old would-be gangstertjes, with macho codes about coming up for each other and smaller women. That will wring when he gets enchanted by a girl who lets him look at herself better.

With his compelling dictation, his creative ghost Word and violent raps, Ribeiro packs you completely. Effortlessly you believe his character, Kenny, a boy looking for love but is stuck in a street culture where the right of the strongest applies. Typical are the metaphors in his ode to his girl, in which « being with her » is tastier than someone hit his jaw, stealing, breaking in, and then sleeping in your own bed after a night at the police station. Ribeiro’s glowing interpretation makes this derailed kid dangerously sympathetic.

The ambivalent feelings at the character makes Runner So good. After the shocking denouement, a group rape, Kenny looks back as a 25-year-old briefly. You feel his remorse, but remains unspoken. His explanation is that neglect of children creates perpetrators. That explanation leaves a lot of room for discussion: about forgiveness, upbringing, punishment, men’s culture. And above all about the missing perspective of the girl.

Mars-Mannetjes

Another show that you don’t want to miss, but of a completely different order, is Ghost from Poezieboys & Joost Oomen, a feast of absurdism and language. On top of a dune top, three performers (Joep Hendrikx, Jos Nargy, Oomen) and musician Nick Feenstra create their own island, Eierland, where they perform a playful search for the meaning of inspiration. As an example, they introduce Jack Spicer, the American poet who announced that Maljes van Mars dictated his poems. In his imitation, they place ‘ideas catchers’ in the sand.

Ghost is a parade of sketches that fly in all directions. There is a competition for improvising poets, the Eierland Open, slapstick with a beach chair, public insult, and as the highlight a crazy professor who performs brain operation to uncover inspiration. And there is always poetry, cleverly encapsulated in the madness. Hendrikx carries his own ultimate, realistic poems (« Water comes from the tap »), while Oomen lets bizarre metaphors tumble over each other (« all bookkeepers were born under the constellation Bonnetje »). Nargy sings a hit-sensitive blues-dance number about Elvis (« I’m Elvis Presley, I’m a Satisfier »). Will see that.

Bitterball

Oerol is rich in music theater and an appealing example is Coda From the Cello Octet and actress Sophie van Winden. In a round, wooden open -air theater on the beach, she plays a centenary, with wig, curved back and cramped fists. She is a climate activist who is concerned about what her great -grandson will experience. He knows what’s wrong. The smell of freshly mowed grass is now sweat, he says, of soured blades.

The Octet plays compositions of Japanese Ryuichi Sakamoto, who is dragged the story as an activist friend of the hundred years old. It is beautiful if Van Winden increases itself into a furious tirade about the stalled energy transition: from « bitterballen! The raffling of evil! » To Hartkreet « Rage! Rage! Against the Dying of the Light. » What did her great -grandson said when he heard that grandma was a climate activist? « Continue like this. » In the same laconic way Coda An incentive to the public.

Trees kiss

On the first very hot Oerol days, there was unfortunately also a majority less good and disappointing performances. When did you leave? Despite strong dance and music, a distant exercise remains from Via Berlin. It played in the dark Drifting, Live Sessionsfrom Touki Delphine, gets a ten for atmosphere thanks to an installation of luminous wiper reservoirs. But the bright and knock they produce, intersected with music from Joachim Badenhorst, on saxophone and clarinet, has too little tension for ninety minutes.

Most disappointing is Promise makes guiltagain from the usefulness, with Greg Nottrot and Martin Rombouts: a vain and easy -going epilogue on not proudly incomparable Good gold money in 2023. The third Oerol performance of the Nut, The capitalistsa colorful evening about the distribution of wealth is especially informative if you have never thought or read about the subject.

But those performances are still a blessing compared to Treeworkfrom Landmarks, in which trees are considered « active performers and creative beings ». What means that three performers run through the forest, embrace trees and kisses, and emit primitive sounds. How does a conversation with a tree sound? As « bwweehhh » and « uhhhh », the mouth pressed against the bark. It is fairly mold stuff, where not every spectator can laugh. Also for Treework You have to get up early, because it starts at seven o’clock. Then rather go to the beach again, to see the sun coming up.

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