What inspires theater makers to put beautiful books on stage if they actually have no idea what to do with them? That is the question when seeing The evening is discomfort, a performance by Bos Theater Productions based on the debut novel by Lucas Rijneveld. Everything that is poetic, intimate, painful and expressive about that soothing novel has been squeezed out in the stage adaptation.
In the novel, the associative voice of a twelve-year-old farmer’s daughter speaks about the suffocating atmosphere in her family, shortly after her brother died in an accident. For the theater version, editor Jibbe Willems had the inspiration to split that compelling voice into two narrators: the girl and her dead brother. The extra is that the two roles are played by twins: actresses Jip and Imke Smit.
But the liveliness hardly benefits from it. The fact that much of the text is still in narrative mode creates a distant and artificial effect. It is as if everything the six actors of the ensemble say and do lingers in the distance, on stage.
Under the direction of Nina Spijkers, the actors regularly raise their voices, but this does not necessarily produce more penetrating emotions. The loud playing is not as annoying as in her direction Coriolanus at the National Theater earlier this year, in which Spijkers also had the actors shout a lot, but it is a misguided method of communicating feelings.
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