She is the last living person on earth and has traveled all over the world, although she will immediately agree that this is undeniably impossible. And yet: she visited museums, removed paintings from the walls and fired them up. Even The Night Watch she pulled from his list: you need something to keep warm.
Marlies Heuer plays this Kate, the character from Wittgenstein’s mistress (1988) by American writer David Markson, in museums and galleries. She is accompanied by cellist Jan Kuijken. In Kunstruimte KuuB in Utrecht, where the performance took place last weekend, there are paintings by Vera Pouw, showing battered, weathered bodies. A striking backdrop for this loneliness-stricken character.
Interview with Marlies Heuer: ‘When I’m old, I want to be a nurse’
Heuer compressed the plot-free and conflict-free novel into a wonderful chamber play. She took the recently published translation by Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes as her starting point, which elicits wonderful observations from the displaced artist in unruly language: often at the same time poetic, tragic and banal. For example, after a fragmentary confession about her son’s death: “Of course life went on, although sometimes it seemed like you had spent a good part of your life looking in and out of windows.”
It seems as if Heuer lets the words slip, as if she is stammeringly carried away by the language. The character regularly puts himself down, calling himself “unmistakably crazy” and “clearly complete of my own accord”. What is actually not in her head, she wonders. “What do we really know?”
Also read thisfive-ball review of David Markson’s novel ‘Wittgenstein’s mistress’
In the meantime, almost every word has been placed carefully and accurately: Heuer’s diction is light-footed but moving, her facial expression makes her just that one fraction more fragile. All the lies, colored memories and half-truths obscure one irrefutable fact: her sadness and loneliness are real. When her flow of words stops and the cello music swells, you can see that clearly.