The performance Bitch by Club Lam is set in Venlo in 2050, where there is thunder and lightning, and where the paths of the mythical women Cassandra, Ophelia and Truuj cross. Cassandra, the Trojan who could predict the future but was not believed, Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend who drowned, and Truuj, the fictional city heroine who defended Venlo during a siege in the 16th century.
Once again, no one believes Cassandra’s predictions (Ayla Çekin Satijn) when she warns of an impending flood. At the town hall, a set of high metal plates with several floors where the actors occasionally appear unexpectedly, Cassandra and Truuj Bolwater (Marloes IJpelaar) start talking to each other. Desperate, Cassandra tells her that no one believes her predictions of a coming flood. But Truuj does trust Cassandra’s intuition and prevents a dike breach by sticking her bra in the dike and thus saving the city. Meanwhile, Ophelia (Ella Kamerbeek), a TV presenter who reports on the situation, also appears.
After this heroic act, Cassandra and Ophelia decide that it is time for female leadership, they long for a coup. They see Truuj as the face of their revolution: a beautiful, innocent-looking woman. That’s strange, because it doesn’t match their views. They want to rebel against patriarchal structures, but present Truuj in a way that maintains the same male image: a woman who is reduced to external characteristics.
Critical statements
Truuj has little interest in combating misogyny with man-hatred. “I’m not that radical,” she says to Cassandra and Ophelia, who are overflowing with ideas for the takeover: re-education camps for men, men with seven ticks as scapegoats, a ritual slaughter of Johan Derksen. They would prefer to see him impaled on a bridge above the Maas, while he “shits himself”, symbolizing “all the shit he spouts”. While Cassandra expresses this fantasy in great detail, Ophelia portrays this unashamed scene so dramatically that you can actually see it in your mind’s eye.
In hilarious and theatrical scenes, theater collective Club Lam makes critical statements about the subordinate position of women. This happens in the company’s characteristic mix of historical stories and current events, performed with charged acting. Emotions are emphasized and the characters are presented as caricatures, which keeps the attention. For example, Ophelia’s dramatic drowning in a large puddle of water quickly follows a performance of the TikTok dance to Taylor Swift’s megahit ‘The Fate of Ophelia’.
The performance is not only about the voice of women, but also takes many side roads. The climate crisis, the arrival of refugees, relations between the Randstad and the province and increasing polarization: these topics appear in subordinate clauses, so they add little to the strong, feminist core.
Besides all the theatrical and humorous aspects, Club Lam also manages to strike a serious chord. At the end, past and present appear on a screen. Bitch not only pays tribute to the mythical figures Ophelia, Cassandra and Truuj, but to all courageous women whose voices, whether outspoken or expressed in small actions, were unjustly silenced.
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