Swimming pools, vaults and bitches: going 'Underground' with Johan Simons
Halfway through Underground I had almost screamed ‘STOP!‘. At the end I felt too worn out to applaud. But one day later I thought: wait a minute, was it really thát bad? And I found myself thinking again about Johan Simon’s new play for NTGent & Theater Antigone, based on Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns.
That it was a struggle. Basically, that’s what made that really tiresome play Underground still interesting for me. A theatre director trying to make the best of a play that isn’t really a play. Actors fighting to get those words and sentences across, knowing that they are tiring the audience with all their tedious repetitions. Sometimes acting completely over the top, sometimes suddenly finding the right tone. Some of them never really knowing what to do.
Yes, Die Kontrakte Des Kaufmanns, from Nobel Prize winning-author Elfriede Jelinek, is quite something. It was written at the beginning of last year’s credit crunch and financial meltdown, and can, with hindsight, be considered to be quite prophetic. It’s not really a play, but more of a pamphlet, using lots of literary tricks and effects (you’ll find the interesting notes – in Dutch - of the play’s translator here). One of the problems, for a theatre audience, is that it’s filled with easy statements, clichés and endless repetitions.
Yes, those banks were greedy. And they will be greedy again. Yes, we’re all guilty and stupid, because everybody was believing in the powers of that financial system: in the end we were all going to be rich. After having heard those ideas for the umpteenth time during Underground, you really start thinking about going home. Especially because most of the time the actors feel the need to scream their lines.
So you start thinking about the rest. You start looking at Simons’ tricks. At the things he does to try and make an ‘enjoyable’ play out of all this. A giant vault and a swimming pool on stage. Musical interludes: Bob Dylan, Radiohead, Edelweiss. His references to Belgium: somebody wearing a mask of ex-prime minister Yves Leterme; the audience being able to throw shoes at the actors, thereby referring to a tumultuous Fortis-shareholders meeting.
And you start to notice different scenes. The stupid investors. The bankers. The father who murdered his family out of shame. You find yourself looking at those costumes and wondering why you are seeing hillbillies, U2-fans, rappers and scarcely clad bitches. One day later I read how costume designer Dorothée Curio wanted to put groups of people on stage, thereby reflecting Jelineks text. And I found it interesting to read how she based her costumes on James Mollison’s book The disciplines (photo gallery here), for which he photographed music fans copying the dress code of their idols.
Get my drift? Start to see the struggle? Yes, Underground is a failure, but somehow it’s an interesting one. It’s theatre, staggering, rummaging, crunching.
