IN AN upper room at a dockside arts centre in Stavanger – heavy wooden beams in the roof, dark sea and gleaming harbour lights beyond the windows – an audience assembles on 100 or so plain wooden chairs, arranged in a rough circle. Some of the chair
s are already occupied; and as the lights dim, the men sitting on them suddenly climb up to stand on their seats, and begin to sing Schubert lieder, with a heart-stopping, tightly-disciplined intensity.
The men are members of the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, widely recognised as Belgium's finest male voice choir. And they are providing a counterpoint – the backdrop and foreground, the balancing element in the argument – to Muziektheater Transparant's Ruhe, one of the most quietly searching shows about the origin and nature of Nazism ever staged in Europe.
As the voices fade, a woman stands up and comes to the centre of the circle, recounting a silly girl's tale of why she thought it was right, proper and fun to be involved with Hitler's SS in the 1940s; later, she is matched by a man, whose vulgar justifications for anti-Semitism and ethnic bigotry start by sounding quite reasonable, and end up turning the stomach.
Sometimes, this man is played by Muziektheater Transparant associate Josse De Pauw, the leading Flemish actor, director, and writer whose brainchild this show is. And although the text is based on a book published in the 1960s about the self-justifying testimony of unrepentant former SS members, it has been transformed, through the special genius of this company, into an event that treads delicately along the boundary between theatre and world-class musical performance; and that finally emerges as a challenging and frightening meditation, with elements of new music and visual imagery, on the gulf between the perfect integrity and beauty of Schubert's music on one hand, and the sheer banality of everyday evil on the other.
"One of the reasons why the book overwhelmed us as it did," says Josse De Pauw, "is because it challenges one's assumptions. You start out with the firm belief that fascism has nothing to do with you. But then it soon emerges that these SS volunteers were in fact very ordinary people, who thought pretty much the same way you do; the point of doing the show is to confront that."
And in all of these respects – from its powerful theatrical purpose to its subtle, exploratory use of new and existing music in performance – Ruhe is typical of Muziektheater Transparant, who, from their base in Antwerp, are fast emerging as one of the most sought-after companies on the international performance scene.
In Stavanger – Norway's European City of Culture 2008 – they were the first artists-in-residence at the city's year-long Open Port Festival, directed in inspirational style by Mary Miller, formerly a music critic with The Scotsman. Over an intensive three weeks in February, the company presented four challenging productions, two of them involving local children and young people, along with a series of workshops and events on subjects ranging from new forms of music theatre, to the company's "Institute for the Living Voice"; their relationship with Stavanger is set to continue in the long term.
Their acclaimed latest show, playing now in Flanders, is a giant adult sleepover-cum-storytelling, with episodes of music, that features a boat ride to a disused warehouse and an overnight stay in a huge dockland dormitory. In Edinburgh in August, at The Hub, they will present not only Ruhe, but also their virulent 1920s political cabaret, Wolpe! Welche Farbe hat der Vogel?, a sequence of blazing socialist torch-songs, delivered by the fabulous Viviane De Muynck – well known to Tramway audiences for her performances with Needcompany – with a ferocity that makes the contemporary work of Brecht and Weill look hopelessly middle-of-the-road. And over the next three years, Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, hopes to develop a continuing relationship with the company, as they explore their new connection with Edinburgh audiences, and begin to feed the dynamics of the EIF into their own creative process, which involves two artistic directors and five young composers-in-residence.
Guy Coolen, the company's general director and joint artistic director, says: "I think we're at a point where new models of international co-operation in the arts are beginning to take over from straightforward festival visits. For example, we know that what we do has begun to work well with audiences at home in Belgium. But that's not necessarily true elsewhere, and it's very interesting for us to work with different cities and audiences, and to explore what we can contribute over a substantial time.
"And it's very satisfying for us to come to Scotland and to the UK, and to develop our relationships there. Right back in 1993-94, when our company was formed in Antwerp out of the shell of an old, failing chamber opera group, the very first show we chose to perform was Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs For A Mad King, and he has been our friend and honorary president ever since – we were thrilled to be able to premiere his Mr Emmet Takes A Walk at the St Magnus Festival in 2000.
"We have so many good projects coming up, including a chance to work in Istanbul, City of Culture in 2010, which should be really exciting. And in general, I feel there's so much energy coming from the underground at the moment, so many different things happening in small venues across various forms of music from rock to classical, with the voice, with visual arts and so on. We need to be in touch with that, and of course the scene in Scotland and Britain is a very rich one. So we're looking forward to being in Edinburgh in August; and I'm sure we'll make some exciting new connections for the future."
&149 Ruhe is at The Hub, Edinburgh from 21-24 August; Wolpe… is at the same venue on 29 and 30 August.
The full article contains 1037 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
