The theme of Disco Pigs is dated, but thanks to the talented actors it is still fun ★★★☆☆

Pieces of concrete have been knocked out of the wall. Perhaps the playground of the Rotterdam theater company Mooi Weer & Zo always looks like this. Or maybe Zwijn and Zeug did that with their shopping cart. It is not without reason that they are two of the most violent characters in the recent theatrical repertoire.

Lynn Schutter directed a new, Rotterdam version of Disco Pigs† This 1996 play is by Irish author Enda Walsh and was a big hit at the time. It marked the breakthrough of the then still very young Irish actor Cillian Murphy. The piece fit into a trend of raw realism, just like the film Trainspotting from the same year, which portrayed the lives of a young generation of Irish or British underclass, full of drugs and violence.

We now have some other problems on our mind. But Schutter and Mooi Weer & Zo nevertheless saw the benefit of performing an adaptation. Zwijn and Zeug, as the two teenage protagonists call themselves, are now not wandering through Cork, but through Rotterdam. Aimlessly and without a future they wander through the city, ‘from the shopping gutter to deep into the ass of South Rotterdam’ and wherever they go, they attract violence.

Fortunately, Julia Diepstraten and Mendel van der Ploeg are two very talented young actors who, despite the dated theme, draw the performance to an enjoyable plan. Energetic, challenging and with loads of youthful hubris, the two tell their unhealthy life story, in which their fantasy sometimes clearly gets the upper hand. Even if you as a spectator don’t want to go along with it, they will drag you through it by the hair.