When someone says “It’s easy to talk in hindsight” you know something has gone horribly wrong. And that the speaker apologizes in advance for something that is held against him. That is the situation with these opening words of the character Valerie (played by Anna Raadsveld) in Isotopiaa performance by director Liliane Brakema, realized by her own production company &Brakema.
Prior to her words, Valerie and her husband Ben (Ali-Ben Horsting) run, roll and pretend fight to orchestral film music: cheerful and free. In retrospect – yes then it is easy – you understand that here two people celebrate the freedom of unfettered dancing and movement: of being human.
Because Isotopia is set in a dystopian future where robots have made humans unemployed and hyperinflation has made rents unaffordable. Valerie and Ben are also semi-homeless as a result: they live in their car. It is an exciting starting point, also because science fiction theater is a rarity.
But how do you relate the often basic visual language of theater to the high-tech solutions for ruined societies in films? Of course not. The decor does not include more than a table, some chairs and a dress on a hanger. There is a bang once, but this is simply the story of two people who fall into the grip of dark forces.
Anyone who doesn’t comply is out
Valerie meets a woman who offers her to take up her old job as a doctor in a newly formed utopian state with the promise of prosperity, on an island: Isotopia. There they are immediately enclosed by the surveillance system: a device attached to the body checks, measures and evaluates every second of all human actions of the residents. The system turns out to be traumatic and life-threatening: those who fail to comply are out.
In Isotopia Brakema shows the effect of the loss of privacy and of inescapable, digitized coercion. Valerie and Ben are slowly going crazy. In a series of feverish sequences, their way of speaking and moving constantly changes. One moment Ben is shaking and jerking like he’s electrified and he’s talking in a faltering voice, the next he seems almost normal, but blank. Valerie goes from machine to mess and back.
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Is it nightmares, is it their subconscious that is protesting or is it a realistic depiction of the transformations they undergo? It doesn’t matter much. They slide off and their personality pulverizes. Until Valerie comes to an act about which it is easy to judge afterwards. With the twist, of course, that it is not that easy: how do you blame someone who has been dehumanized for her dehumanized behavior?
Brakema has a feeling for creating penetrating images, such as these sequences. Also her direction of Uncle Vanya at the Noord Nederlands Toneel (in 2020) had a beautiful, visual component, in the form of an endless rain shower on stage. The psychology of the characters receives less attention in her direction. The few moments when the actors reflect on the events are played out flat.
She prefers to opt for physical language of movement. In a final dream sequence, Valerie and Ben run free once more, romping. That is the true utopia.