Anniek Pheifer (44) and Jacqueline Blom (60) exchanged their familiar stage grounds for the unfamiliar territory of the cabaret, ‘so that they could also find things’. The occasional duo soon found out that finding something to do is very different from actually doing something. Something may sound nice, but does it make sense? For example, Pheifer wonders if she can call herself an environmental activist when she drives a “dirty Ford Fiesta”. In a dazzling performance full of movement, music and wonderfully played enlargements of themselves, Pheifer & Blom show that human deficits are often a bummer in attempts at steadfast activism.
For example, we would like to live more sustainably, but with the prospect of an enticing trip to Bali, principles sometimes turn out to be very flexible.
And we demand empathy from the other while we can hardly muster it ourselves, we learn from a hilarious sketch in which Pheifer bursts out crying after a comment from Blom.
Also read the interview with cabaret duo Pheifer & Blom: ‘We also want to claim things about the world’
unintelligible song
and and is a cheerful chaos, in which the colorful decor seems to have run away from Salvador Dalí’s studio. Blom: “You have to dress up life to make it fun.” Every now and then a huge ear or eye is brought out of a jungle of multicolored plants, after which Blom starts a PowerPoint presentation about ‘the four ways of listening’. Then again the inner voices of Pheifer & Blom take over their tongues and we see them projected on screen addressing their earthly apparitions sternly.
Not all songs are equally clear, but the tightly composed chaos clearly serves a message: there is a lot of noise, change is not that easy at all. The absurdist reflections on the cabaret genre are also witty, for example when the duo discusses what kind of public participation they will use to break through the ‘fourth wall’. The proposal to allow the public to pass a fish in a plastic bag has been rejected. In the end they conclude their clever and comical performance by singing an ‘unintelligible song’.