Sun against and a strong sea breeze: these are the charms of a beach opera at Bergen aan Zee. The stylized stern of an oil tanker is naturally sandblasted; containers and barrels are post-apocalyptic all around. Cape thatgood deal is the opening performance of the Karavaan Festival for location theater in Alkmaar and the surrounding area. In June, at Oerol on Terschelling, this anti-consumption tirade will be resumed.
Art and engagement are not a natural marriage. Not even if the lyricist’s name is Jibbe Willems, the language magician who Cape thatgood deal end the trilogy Islands† Just like before dyke drift and potato eaters Willems has brewed a special dialect. The main character, a captain who is stranded with a ship full of contaminated oil, speaks Lower Colonial: Dutch interspersed with Papiamentu and Sranantongo. ‘Money and money. Even if it stinks.’
It’s one of those moments when the audience just laughs. Because no matter how great the actor Guus van der Steen makes, wind and surf work against him. In this way the bit of conflict that is supposed to flavor the performance, the hesitation between profit and morality fades away. What remains: one-dimensional music theater around our oil addiction.
Composer Frank Wien wrote a funny insurance chorus and a bold climate denier chorus (“We can’t do anything with those rascals anymore”). He explores degrees of speaking singing and delivers a song here and there. According to the makers sings Cape thatgood deal ‘the end of an era in which we could be endlessly satisfied without shame’. Is that allowed from now on without a Greta Thunberg who comes to preach in a yellow oil coat for his own parish?
Cape thatgood deal
By Silbersee and Gouden Haas, in collaboration with Slagwerk Den Haag and Consensus Vocalis. Directed by: Gienke Deuten
musical theatre
27/5, Bergen aan Zee. Until 5/6, then from 10/6 to 19/6 on Oerol (Terschelling).