From 2004 to 2016, the satirical TV program Koefnoen was a permanent fixture on Saturday evenings. Now comedians Paul Groot, Owen Schumacher and Jeremy Baker get their characters out of mothballs. But don’t expect imitations from celebrities.
Finally they can get off the starting blocks: it’s Tuesday 22 February in a well-filled Singer Theater in Laren. Here, after countless times of cancellation and postponement, the first full try-out will take place Kofnoen live†
The show starts, and soon the audience imagines themselves on the parents’ evening of primary school de Karrekrak, where the snippy Miss Jenny (Jeremy Baker) explains that the children will soon also be taught about ‘the other side of history’, with more attention to the ‘mistakes of the past.’ The parents, played by Paul Groot, Owen Schumacher, Sanne Franssen and Kiki van Deursen, end up in a heated discussion with the teacher about how the Golden Age should be treated in the classroom.
The Karrekrak is followed by a long parade of characters, songs, surprising decor effects and hurried dressing up. Known person kufnoenfigures enter the scene, such as the ANWB couple Okko and Eugenie, the Zeeland shrimp peelers Roelfje and Wimpje and the jovial vagabonds Lou and Lau. Afterwards, a visitor in the foyer says: ‘It was fun, wasn’t it? Really everything that has been in the news lately has passed by in one way or another.’
A week and a half earlier, actors and comedians Paul Groot (54), Owen Schumacher (54) and Jeremy Baker (53) are sitting at the More Theater Productions office in Amsterdam, where they explain why this theater version had to be made.
Schumacher: ‘In kufnoen we have created a collection of fixed types. For years we have looked at the world through their eyes. Even after kufnoen stopped, we thought at news events: how would so-and-so react to it? We can now lose that again.’
Baker: “You can now replay a character that you otherwise only played one morning and grind it to perfection.”
Groot: ‘You also have time in the theater to let your characters develop. If you want even a fateful development, because you don’t need them anymore after this.’
From 2004 to 2016, the satirical TV show kufnoen a fixed value on the Saturday evening of NPO 1. kufnoen (Yiddish for ‘for nothing’) originated from the popular cabaret of tackswhere Paul Groot and Owen Schumacher caused a furore with, among others, Groot’s imitations of Pim Fortuyn, Jan Wolkers and Peter R. de Vries and Schumacher’s imitations of Jan Peter Balkenende, Gerrit Zalm and Frank de Grave.
In 2004 the duo received a royal offer from the Avro: a weekly satirical program with a large budget that they could fill in according to their own taste. The transfer was a fact and Groot and Schumacher got to work, assisted by a team of befriended actors and writers.
Halfway through the first season, Jeremy Baker became a regular writer and started playing more and more roles himself, such as Nesrin, a vulgar beauty vloggerwhich instills “style and class” on its followers.
kufnoen was well viewed – usually by around one million viewers – and in 2006 it won the prestigious Silver Nipkow disc, awarded by the Dutch TV critics. They wrote in the jury report: ‘kufnoen has become much more than an imitation program. It is an indicator of the zeitgeist, which goes beyond the pure current satire.’ kufnoen became the most important program that Paul Groot and Owen Schumacher made in their careers.
Groot: ‘It was one big playground. We had complete freedom to make what we wanted. It kicked my creativity into high gear.’
Schumacher: ‘It was also very bad from U.S† I am very proud of what we at tacks have done, but kufnoen had more of our signature. It was a little more artistic; there was no one to interfere.’
Which kufnoen, at the time one of the most expensive programs of the NPO, had to stop in 2016, it was therefore quite a challenge for Groot, Schumacher and Baker. The decision came from the broadcaster’s management: the Avro had become Avrotros after a merger in 2014.
Schumacher: ‘We would have liked to continue for a few more seasons, but in retrospect it is also fine that it was over after thirteen years.’
Groot: ‘The broadcasters did not think the viewing figures were high enough. The argument came mainly from the Tros angle that kufnoen ‘too elitist’. Ipie was mentioned as an example, the housewife I played who is bumbling through life. It was said: you are persifing our target group with this, you are laughing at our viewers. That surprised me, because I myself view Ipie with a lot of compassion.’
Where the one corner kufnoen too elitist, came from another, including the TV critics of de Volkskrantin addition to praise the criticism that the program was not sharp enough and would be missing teeth.
Schumacher: ‘It is a diabolical dilemma. If you’re satire on primetime, you’re always a bit of a compromise. You want to make something with quality, something that the right listener can appreciate, at the same time you have to reach a million people to justify the large budget. That’s why we sometimes alternated things that we thought were cool to do with imitations that scored anyway.’
Groot: ‘We thought it was very funny, for example, the bloopers by the Swedish arthouse director Ingmar Bergman to film. While a large part of our audience will have thought: hmm, what is this about? We had in mind that we wanted to make sharp comedy, but maybe we are fairly mild people ourselves and very sharp does not suit us. That is also possible.’
Baker: ‘I also think it’s a misconception that satire should always be hard and corrosive. There is also a mild variant, which is much more based on recognition, but which also tilts reality.’
Schumacher: ‘We have also sometimes blown our minds, such as with the parody of College Tour with Willem Holleeder from 2012. That episode came about because we were genuinely pissed that Twan Huys had invited the criminal in his program. But you can’t make a scene like that, which is based on anger, every week, then it has less effect.’
Success number from kufnoen on TV were the imitations of famous Dutch people. Will we also see them in the theater?
Baker: ‘Marten and Oopjen, the Amsterdammers from the 17th century painted by Rembrandt, are they also Dutch celebrities? Other than that, none have ended up in the show. In recent years we have dared to let go of that more on TV, and especially to use our own types. You have less freedom with imitations.’
Groot: ‘Yes, I’ve had that feeling for a while myself. It is sometimes very black and white with imitations: it seems as if it does not seem. Imitation has not been so popular in the cabaret in recent years. It’s a wave: for years it’s popular and then it goes underground again. Now it’s the end of the curve for a while.’
Schumacher: ‘Bee tacks we were lucky that there were politicians, like those of the LPF and the Purple coalition parties, who were not polished, didn’t know how to deal with media. Then came politicians who were less clumsy, such as Mark Rutte. That made it less rewarding for imitators. And in recent years, with Donald Trump and Forum for Democracy, reality has become so grotesque that it doesn’t even matter.’
Groot: ‘We treat in Kofnoen live more current trends. It is about the problems that have plagued us for months, years. It feels very topical and relevant, without it being news from yesterday’s newspaper.’
Baker: ‘When we started writing, we quickly arrived at the theme of ‘change’. The climate crisis, corona: how do you relate to change?’
Schumacher: ‘We know why we should change our behaviour, but we all have our reasons for not doing it. With that in mind, we started our archetypal characters.’
Koefnoen live will premiere 12/3 in the DeLaMar Theater in Amsterdam. Tour until 30/6.
Three times typical kufnoen
How do the makers look back on three famous Kufnoen sketches?
Vagabonds Lou and Lau visit the Woonbeurs (2008)
The bums Lou and Lau (Groot and Schumacher) visit the Woonbeurs.
Groot: ‘This is something we’ve done a lot in kufnoen: entering the real world as characters without text and recording it with hidden cameras. Those bums, who are now also in the performance, went here to the Woonbeurs in the Rai. They were filmed from a distance, so that the visitors didn’t realize they were in a recording.’
Schumacher: ‘The bums suddenly lie down on an expensive bed from Hästings. People come to look like: ‘Is that necessary?’ and ‘What are you doing here?’ Like breaking into the Rai.’
Groot: ‘I always liked doing things like this: making up what you’re going to play on the spot.’
The CDA at I love Holland (2011)
CDA politicians participate in TV quiz I love Holland by Linda de Mol.
Schumacher: ‘This sketch is often considered one of our highlights. We’ve wanted to do something with the program for a long time I love Holland† Then there was a riot within the CDA about their asylum policy: they pretended they were still a pleasant family party, but they were very much at odds with each other. When we combined those two things, we knew: now it’s right.’
Groot: ‘It is a beautiful combination of form, good imitations and topical content. I do remember thinking with Henk Bleker: how the hell can I play this? Then we broadened my head with make-up sponges.’
Baker: ‘And you let me play the rebellious MP Kathleen Ferrier. And that while I can’t imitate at all!’
Geer and Goor meet Simon Carmiggelt (2013)
A walk through Amsterdam by the late Parool columnist Simon Carmiggelt is rudely interrupted by Gordon and Gerard Joling.
Groot: ‘Oh, Laus Steenbeeke. We asked him to play Simon Carmiggelt and he did it so well!’
Schumacher: ‘It was his hundredth birthday, we thought: Carmiggelt, that is the man of a very subtle kind of Amsterdam humor, which relies on the formulations. And what are we laughing so hard at now? The rudeness and flatness of Geer and Goor. The fun was getting those two species to meet. †
‘We had previously made a successful sketch about Geer and Goor in which they visited the Hofstad group. Then we thought: we shouldn’t play that too often. Other people just said: you should do that more often, people like that! We thought you had to have a good reason for it.
Ipie the housewife
One of the best-known kufnoencharacters is Ipie, a single housewife played by Paul Groot with short red hair and a practical windbreaker, who is bumbling through life. Groot: ‘We are all such bumbling people. I myself sometimes have a stalled drawer at home, and I get the inspiration for Ipie from my own bungling. She is a schlemiel, but tries to make the best of life. That’s why she’s a good comedy type. There are still people who say: I saw Ipie in France.’