Well, the time has come… Unfortunately. Paul van Vliet (87) passed away. The most stylish of our entertainers for over sixty years.
And it is actually obvious, he had his farewell song ready. In 2019 he sang under the title of Reinout Douma’s Noordpool Orkest My last wish “When the time comes, leave me at home. That you don’t come to visit, but are there. My own bed and your intensive care unit. I’m whining, it’s not over yet.”
Irony, warmth and wit
In his fourteenth book, he achieved the concept in 2021 homesickness to the title, but he didn’t drown in nostalgia, didn’t feel the need to rewrite his history. It wasn’t a sigh. In Homesick for tomorrow he characterized himself in prose and poetry as the man who traveled four continents as a theater man and as ambassador for UNICEF, never went wild and survived the ‘most disastrous’ performances. He did not cloak himself in a cloud of invulnerability or arrogance, although he sometimes encountered journalists who thought they were measuring him in terms of his social involvement. He celebrated his irony, his warmth and acumen exuberantly in text and language, his specialty. It is striking: that book is somewhat similar to how Van Vliet made his shows in terms of staging, plot and completion. Loving and concerned. He characterized his audience as “The pearl necklace and the jeans.”
He is an entertainer of the highest class. Tried to put things into perspective with a motto like I’ve started over so many times , retired from major shows years ago, but continued to perform. His Sunday matinees in the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague became a draw for weeks on end. There he once started Cabaret PePijn, which became a playground and practice area for colleagues. Youp, Jochem, Bert, Brigitte Kaandorp, Theo Maassen, they have all been there. Van Vliet closely followed developments in the profession, advised and stimulated. He was a typical citizen of The Hague, a man of standing, by the looks of it. Although. “I lost my way in The Hague. My city is unrecognizable because of the commercial clearcutting.”
US tours
A regal-looking, imposing figure with a gray head in a long black coat. Heavy singing and speaking voice. Musically well oriented, he worked with the best accompanists, including the Groningen keyboardists Lex Jasper and Klaas van Dijk. The shelf life factor has never been discussed. Drooling sentiment was foreign to him. He did say: “We comedians do not become immortal, even if we play for a lifetime.” He also loved the challenges. In the musical My Fair Lady he played the unapproachable Professor Higgins for two seasons. Unlikely beautiful.
A little English. Van Vliet had a relationship with this. In 1973, ’76 and ’80 he made shows, especially for American tours, after practice periods for foreign tourists in Amsterdam. They gratefully received his small songs and the poetic pieces.
He sometimes wondered if the muddled current events had caught up with him. Wrongly. His resilience was unbroken, virtually until the last few weeks. He never used his age as a reason or an excuse. He used his motivation, humor, virtuoso text control and timing, his diction and his fantasy on the basis of a gigantic stage personality. Undeterred, he led ‘the procession through time’ with a self-evidence that is reminiscent of the early years, when he exchanged his master’s degree as a law graduate for theater and television. A bomb hit when he presented the prince-to-be with a winter coat at the wedding of Princess Beatrix and Mr. Claus von Amsberg during a kind of national program. “To roll up your sleeves.”
Of The sea decades ago he released the best environmental song of all time. It is an indictment of what we shamelessly do to nature. He is also the author of Letters to God and Other People. With that he grabbed the audience by the drudgery to undergo a different form of recognition. The legendary lecturer Wim Kan called Paul and Herman van Veen “my sons.” Van Veen (now 78) noted in 2015: “Van Vliet is about as old as the longest war ever.”
The song So much has not yet been said, so much has been hushed up he sang very often. Beats. We realize that. Sad, now that he’s suddenly gone.
Types and songs
Paul van Vliet has delivered a series of historical types. Such as: The farmer (“Those are nice things for people”), Bram van de commune (“It’s good, isn’t it?”), Major Kees (“Men, listen!”), Baron Charles van Tettero junior (“It’s goes as it happens”) and the monologue The king dies (very loosely after Shakespeare).
From his songs became classics Girls of thirteen (rewritten as Girls of thirty and Men of eighty ), Safe on the back of father’s bicycle, Today or tomorrow and String from the mailbox a theme picked up by the writer and former politician Jan Terlouw.