In his latest cabaret performance, Ronald Goedemondt (50) is defeated. Cause: “I just received a notification that I was out of the diamond leak by Duolingo I’ve been demoted.” In other words: he did not do his daily lesson on the language application on time. Goedemondt vents his anger at the owl constantly present in the app, which in Goedemondt’s eyes supervises a little too strictly. There follows a nice demonstration of how you can hit an owl’s head, which can turn 180 degrees (“and you don’t want to kick him in the back of the head”), so that it hurts. (Not forward, but pedaling around.)
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It is a characteristic Goedemondt song. He often has difficulty getting along with both himself and others. In his ninth performance, he also throws himself wholeheartedly into expressing his struggles about a permanently uncomfortable existence. For some people, powerlessness results in tears, for Goedemondt in anger.
Frustration is not necessarily funny or fascinating to watch, but with Goedemondt it often is. Getting angry seems easy, but in cabaret it is especially effective when the anger is carefully polished. Inflections, carefully accented syllables, timing: no comedian in the Netherlands controls his voice better than Goedemondt. Powerlessness over a candy wrapper that cannot be opened is a tight and dynamic composition for him.
Looking at Goedemondt you don’t see a clown who wants to go on stage because he has a very funny trick. You see a man who has come up with a very funny trick, because otherwise he simply doesn’t know how to express his feelings. With this knowledge, apparent nonsense, such as rage about a virtual owl in an app, gains meaning and meaning for Goedemondt.
Permanently displaced
Goedemondt concludes several times My dear suspicion that he never feels at home anywhere. This produces a few long-winded stories, but above all strong examples. It is ugly that he expresses this conclusion quite literally after several anecdotes, while the example already spoke for itself. It is more fun and interesting when you as an audience are allowed to draw your own conclusions.
Goedemondt, who feels permanently displaced, moves to Palermo, among other places, in search of a sense of home. After all, he is an Italian from Brabant (“I always say when leaving ciaodoe“), so he wants to investigate whether his mother’s hometown might be able to welcome him. He learned Italian through it Duolingobut the knowledge acquired appears to be insufficient to correctly interpret an interaction at the hotel breakfast.
Nicely, he later blames his own chronic suspicion for this. He wrongly perceived an attacking attitude. And his story about the origins of this basic attitude is also funny: Goedemondt’s mother gave the family a solid foundation for a permanent feeling of distrust. His tendency towards wordless frustration also has roots in the upbringing of his hot-tempered “Genghis Mom”.
The persistent tendency towards suspicion results in a great story about how Goedemondt stands in a queue in the shitty Amsterdam South and is annoyed by the lack of driving discipline of his neighbors, whom he detests. Comically cynical, he explains why the line suddenly starts turning a quarter turn when it starts to rain: “The mist from the gentleman! The droplets on the faces… It’s a problem for the rich people! It’s such an inconvenience, damn it… Something that needs to be solved!”
Ultimately, Goedemondt seems to feel at home in the clearer world of a child. When he doesn’t feel comfortable, he constantly eats sweets. And when he suddenly experiences too much peace and quiet in Sweden, he becomes wildly enthusiastic about the idea of sailing to a small uninhabited island and “sneaking around” there. A touching reflex and a reference to another, sweet story: how he used to sneak around with friends in the backyards of rich villas. When life was still bright and fun.
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