Marlies Heuer is the best actress imaginable for the theater solo Wittgenstein’s mistress

There is hardly any other actress imaginable who performs the theater solo so perfectly Wittgenstein’s Mistress could play as Marlies Heuer. In this nearly hour-long poetic flood of words, varying in tempo from slow to excited, her character wanders through her confused thoughts. She must have led an exciting and rich life, according to her stories about all the cities she visited, especially the museums and concert halls and where she was comforted by art.

Wittgenstein’s Mistress is based on the cult novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) by American author David Markson. It is the story of a completed woman’s life: after the death of her son, the woman is lost in herself. “One morning you wake up and all the color is gone from life,” she says. She hopes to find some color in art and in her paintings.

In this at times hallucinatory text, that little boy and his grave pass by in horrifying fragments. But always interspersed with the occasionally rich fantasy of this woman, who lived in the Louvre and the Tate Gallery, and who knows all about Van Gogh, Brahms and Rauschenberg. And she also knows that Wittgenstein had a pet gull, played the clarinet and sculpted.

Marlies Heuer has made this text her own, in a combination of lamentation and cheerful minuet. Her thin voice sometimes goes into depth, doubts and whispers, but is also decisive. Next to her is Jan Kuijken who accompanies the performance with cello music.

Wittgenstein’s mistress is played in galleries and museums; the premiere was recently in the Kuub Utrecht gallery, where expressive paintings were hung that provided the scene with a suitable entourage: wild and sometimes terrifying.