A heartbreaking portrait of loneliness and alienation

Sarah Moeremans is known for her social satires. With a sixth sense for hypocrisy, she pokes fun at the mores of contemporary man in her performances, with the characters regularly addressing the audience in order to put them to their ideological side. The vain scheming produces exuberant and hilarious performances in which no one reaches the end without moral damage.

What ever happened to Mr. pete?Moeremans’ new performance at Het Zuidelijk Toneel is radically different: more mysterious, more compassionate. Upon entering, the audience is divided into two groups: the grandstand and the playing floor are divided into two and each group gets to see its own performance. Because as a spectator you only hear ‘your’ actors through headphones, what is happening on the other side of the room remains unclear. You hear the buzz of the other performance, and you hear your fellow spectators laugh, but it sounds so distant that it seems as if it is happening in an elusive parallel reality.

The audience’s experience mirrors that of the main character. Pete (Joep van der Geest for one group, Gillis Biesheuvel for the other) checks in at a mysterious institution at the start of the performance, and then experiences a series of inexplicable encounters in his room with people who seem to know him, but which he cannot remember. Some of them are helpful, others angry, but he cannot place the emotions: the ghosts of a forgotten past, or care workers in the service of a confusing system.

Dark absurdism

This is how Moeremans creates a world that resembles the dementia drama The Father, or the dark absurdism of Charlie Kaufman’s films. Van der Geest, who I got to see in my half, turns his usual bravado all the way to zero and paints a heartbreaking portrait of loneliness and alienation, of an existence that no longer offers anything to hold on to. The obligingness of the staff that comes to see Pete takes on something perverse: What ever happened to Mr. Pete? paints the picture of a society where human contact is outsourced to healthcare professionals, where the question ‘How are you doing?’ has been replaced by customer satisfaction surveys.

A single moment of beauty offers solace: a cleaning lady sings a comforting song as she mops the room, and the ending feels like a gesture of redemption. Still, the desperation lingers, and the hopeless feeling of having woken up in a world that you no longer recognize.