Review
LIBERATORS, OCCUPIERS AND POPULATION
Hebbel am Ufer, Het Huis van Bourgondië and One Yellow Rabbit
Presented as part of the High Performance Rodeo
January 4 to 8
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
I wish my partner’s father, who fought in the Second World War, had been in Calgary last week to see the North American première of Liberators, Occupiers and Population, which launched this year’s High Performance Rodeo. I think he would have been fascinated by this three-part international co-production about the liberation of Holland, and would have found particular resonance in the soldiers’ stories that make up One Yellow Rabbit’s vivid final panel of the theatrical triptych. What the Rabbits depict here I have heard echoed in his own, sometimes harrowing tales of being in Europe in the wake of D-Day.
OYR’s piece, called Friction, is also the closest to a full-blooded dramatic interpretation of the war in this intriguing but uneven medley of viewpoints and styles. Conceived by Michael Green, who co-stars, and Blake Brooker, who directs, Friction draws on letters, interviews and numerous published sources to re-create the liberation from the perspectives of three Canadian soldiers (Green, Andy Curtis and Brad Payne) and one Dutch citizen (David van Belle). The material has been shaped into a loosely connected scenario and animated by Brooker with daubs of dramatic lighting and brushstrokes of physical theatre. The actors create distinctive characters, from Curtis’s passionate young man who enlists with a burning sense of purpose to Payne’s likable homesick kid who just wishes he were back in Calgary drinking beer with his buddies. The performances are strong and impressive.
It comes as a powerful climax to the preceding sections by the German and Dutch companies, which stick closer to a pure documentary format. The middle piece, Two Minutes by Maastricht’s Het Huis van Bourgondië, is the most disarming. Staged by director Feico Sobel on a modern-looking set with live-video wallpaper, featuring three young actors (Eva Damen, Luc van Loo and Mara van Vlijmen) in contemporary dress, and opening to the tune of David Bowie’s "Young Americans," it appears to be the furthest thing from a wartime memoir. But that’s Sobel’s point. The piece seeks an entrance into the past by way of youth. The old people of the southern Netherlands whose fragmented, sometimes contradictory memories are captured here, were kids and teenagers during the war. What they remember is their admiring awe, both of the invading Germans and the liberating Allies, and the thrill and terror of life in a war zone, huddling in a basement during a bombardment or roaming the rubble in the aftermath of an attack, seeking out unexploded grenades. Their wide-eyed recollections remind you of John Boorman’s film Hope and Glory, about growing up in London during the Blitz. And today, their wonderment continues, as their former invaders now simply cross the border to shop. As one elderly Dutch person puts it, summing up how much relations with Germany have changed in one lifetime: "They were our neighbours, then our occupiers. Now, they’re our customers."
That relationship is the subject of Plan Yellow by Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer, the opening part of the trilogy. Unlike the engaging Two Minutes, however, this section suffers from an awkward English translation of its German text – taken entirely from official Nazi documents – and a bland staging by director Hans-Werner Kroesinger that attempts to evoke the era through period artifacts and popular German songs of the day. Actor Armin Dallapiccola portrays Arthur Seyess-Inquart, the Reichscommissioner of the Netherlands, and delivers his speeches to the occupied Dutch, revealing the Nazis’ mask of friendliness as they endeavoured to convert their fellow "Aryans" to their twisted beliefs. Dallapiccola’s Seyess-Inquart speaks mostly in German, while Damen, playing his secretary, translates.
Later, as a prelude to Friction, the Reichscommissioner returns to offer the Nazi spin on the Allies with a speech about misguided Americans, which is contrasted with a heavy-handed U.S. military film instructing soldiers in fallen Germany not to trust "Jerry," even if he has been defeated.
Liberators, Occupiers and Population was created to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Holland’s liberation, and will be performed in Amsterdam, Maastricht and Berlin in May to coincide with official ceremonies, but sadly it isn’t just old soldiers and aging Dutch citizens who’ll be able to relate to it. Listening to the memories of occupation in Two Minutes, I found myself thinking of children in Iraq who may one day be telling the same stories – although in their case, of course, the occupiers and liberators are one and the same. |
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