De Wederopbouw van het Westen, WITROODZWART

Where do we stand and how did we get here? And where does the world go from here? These are important questions! Does the superb company de KOE perhaps have an answer? Come and see the Grand Finale of their majestic yet also light-hearted history of the West.

The West? The Atlantic West? The Occident? In any case the West in which and with which we grew up. The West that has made us Westerners. An innocent, virginal, lustful, voluptuous, decadent apocalyptic triangle in which we place all our hope.

In Wit the actors looked back at the world of their childhood, full of personal and social ideals. In Rood the stormy but fleeting life of Elizabeth Taylor was the model for the modern Western attitude to life. Zwart focused on the hopeful cultural rebirth of the Renaissance. In this finale the actors once again interweave the three parts to create a cheerful meandering stream full of personal memories, political anecdotes, historical events and unexpected philosophical insights.

• On its establishment in 1989, de KOEcreated performances that reveal a ‘cheerful pessimism and razor-sharp analysis of the human soul’. The company peels off man’s outer layers and puts him on show, though very compassionately and with naive, disarming self-mockery and poetry.

‘Despite the subject, ‘Zwart is above all witty. … Who would have thought that cultural history could be so much fun again.’  - de Volkskrant

‘de KOE at its best: absurd, comic, tragic, philosophical, socially critical and wonderfully grotesque.’  - Knack