‘Looking for Habibi’ is a series of separate scenes about the rather broad theme: love ★★★☆☆

Do we fit together? The players ask each other this question at the beginning of the performance Looking for Habibi† Three actors and two musicians stand in a circle of sand and go in search of love. Or rather: according to what they expect from it, and what they can mean for each other. Or not.

That is the starting point of the new performance by Dood Paard, made in collaboration with Toneelhuis Antwerp. The actors Kuno Bakker and Mokhallad Rasem, who have worked together before, this time asked actress Janneke Remmers, singer Britt Truyts and musician Peter Verhelst to join in this associative performance about love.

Looking for Habibi is a succession of separate scenes on that rather broad theme. ‘Is masturbating love?’, Janneke Remmers wonders, and she herself answers: ‘I hope so’. Just before that, Kuno Bakker declared his love to the earth in a glowing monologue, a love that has been neglected by humans.

In varying compositions, the players try to match each other and define love. In between songs sound and sometimes soft, sometimes very hard, guitar is played. There is a funny scene in which a few short jokes are told (“A 0 and an 8 are walking down the street together, the 0 says to the 8: your belt is tight!”), but there is also acrobatic movement theater about giving birth to a child.

Sometimes scenes are too long or a bit too elusive. For example, two actors hold each other in various poses for a long time while they are sprinkled with loose sand. But there is also the almost touching sigh of a woman alone, who hopes that one day someone will come and want a kiss from her. ‘A mirage in a desert of loneliness’, is what she calls the feeling of falling for someone. Nice.