A great performance, which could only have used some unpleasant surprises

‘Gadverdamme!’, Patrick Nederkoorn has the audience chant when he has said that he will be talking about the climate for an hour and a half – a room full of people who have bought a ticket of their own accord for a cabaret performance about climate change. He can’t help expressing what he thinks many people think: the bleak premise that the Netherlands will disappear below sea level in the near future does not immediately evoke the association of a nice night out.

A better world doesn’t start with him in the first place. Nederkoorn puts in itself high tide down as a shameless Formula 1 fan, someone who proclaims not to eat meat but of course makes an exception for snacks (not meat, but ‘brown fruit’) and whose eyes were opened when he fell for a climate activist, with whom he has meanwhile has a son.

It is a nice line in his performance, which is cleverly and very carefully put together, with a number of beautiful songs and a nice dynamic with pianist Guido van de Meent. Nederkoorn is funniest when he anticipates a Dutch climate refugee migration to Germany; now we are the fortune seekers. With a similar doomsday scenario, the cabaret duo OldenHermanns plays in their climate comedy FCKD!. They just push such a scene a little further over the absurd, apocalyptic edge and press the finger a little harder on the sore spot.

high tide could have used some unpleasant surprises to also be a confrontational mirror. We know by now that we shouldn’t look away, right? It seems that Patrick Nederkoorn didn’t want to evoke too many gadverdamme feelings, in order to have a nice night out.