Dutch Plays

by Della Couling (Editor), Della Couling (Editor)

The first collection of modern Dutch and Flemish plays ever to appear in English.

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lodewijk de Boer's The Buddha of Ceylon: This is a confusing play, as portions of it seem relatively followable, but then there are odd moments that I don't understand--and I'm not sure whether that's because this is in translation, because I'm not seeing the show performed, or because De Boer is a somewhat experimental dramatist. The basic story revolves around a tenuous situation in a Dutch colony in South America in 1943. Dutch authority has been shaken by the Nazi conquest of the home country, and the colonized subjects are restless under colonial rule. In this sense--and especially with Theodor, the colonial governor, being a white supremacist--the play draws clear links between the violence of Nazi occupation and the violence of Dutch colonial occupation. However, the play is also vague at times, and seems maybe even self-contradictory. For instance, at one point Alban (a Jewish refugee from the Netherlands seeking safety in the Americas) introduces his half-Chinese wife as his half-sister, then introduces her as his wife to the same people, and no one seems concerned about that situation. Again, I'm not sure if it's a translation issue or if I missed something on some level. But there are odd bits like that.
https://youtu.be/rbxIn77-xe4

Judith Herzberg's The Wedding Party: A formally experimental play, The Wedding Party consists of a ton of very short scenes--around eighty, I believe. Vignettes really, rather than scenes as such. Set at a wedding reception, the play explores the interpersonal relationships between the guests, families, and ex-husband and ex-wife of the newly married couple. These relationships are generally strained by various interpersonal issues, but there is also a larger concern because almost everyone at the reception has had their life shaped by the Holocaust. Some people are survivors. Some people took in Jewish children and hid them as gentiles. Some people were the children taken in and hidden. But the anxieties about Jewish identity, about the history of the Holocaust, about life and death, etc. deeply mark these short fragmentary scenes, developing the relationships and the individuals in an almost pointillist fashion, with individual dots of scenes coming together to form a picture only comprehensible when viewed as a whole.
https://youtu.be/m_MFmEQ9MVQ

Arne Sierens's Drummers: This play utilizes a kind of kitchen sink realist approach to addressing questions of poverty, precarity, and the lives of the poor--but Sierens definitely uses some non-realist elements to keep the style unique and interesting. Perhaps the most prominent one is repeated use of stream-of-consciousness monologues, in which characters pull together thoughts that don't necessarily always follow logically and speak them as a continual speech.
https://youtu.be/D44x_gFMAJQ

Karst Woudstra's Burying the Dog: This is a good play, with some slightly odd detours--again, I'm not sure if it's the translation or if the Dutch just kind of are into weird theatre, or whether it's just a product of so many of the plays being from the 80s, with the theatre culture of that era. Like many of the other plays in this collection, this has significant themes focused on the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (see, also, Buddha of Ceylon and Wedding Party) and on the Dutch tendency to be fairly restrained and repressed (that's a historically protestant culture for ya).
https://youtu.be/wWpXbL_-J5Y

Frans Strijards's The Stendhal Symdrome: I tried reading this one and couldn't really get into it. Sorry.