Reviews

Modern theatre with parody of musical and circus
***
Utterly zany, goofy and wacky - that's the performance Zilke, death and awakening which provided a welcome change in the series of performances on heavy topics at the Zeeland Nazomer Festival last weekend.

In a forest near Goes, the Flemish company Walpurgis has erected a tent and built a large grandstand that can seat around three hundred people. In that tent, music will be played by the Flemish big band Flat Earth Society and the artists of Walpurgis will perform a fairy tale as absurd as it is obstinate.
It is modern musical theatre, with light parodies of a world of musical, entertainment and circus. About the girl Zilke, who since birth has had the remarkable ability to drop dead several times a day, only to live happily ever after. She thus becomes a circus act and ends up with a shabby performer's family, in which two sisters do an improbable act with a big flamoose, in which whole lobsters and umbrellas disappear.
In the Flemish-absurdist tradition of cartoonists like Kamagurka and Topor is Zilke, death and awakening become musical theatre with cartoonish allure. Peter Vermeersch's contrary compositions are fantastically played by the Flat Earth Society. This is high-level splash and splash music, sometimes along whimsical, unexpected lines, sometimes sensationally erupting. Unfortunately, the lyrics lag behind: the rhymes are rather flat, and you have to be able to resist this Flemish tendency to want to play everything off in a deliberately clumsy and dickish way.
But the audience feasted on it; the laughs were unrelenting and afterwards, the performers were rewarded with prolonged applause and bravos.
The Zeeland Nazomer Festival has a hit on its hands until the end of this week, in a forest on the city outskirts of Goes.
Hein Janssen, De Volkskrant

Broken hearts for sale
(...) If Hemia suffers from a broken heart, then certainly Zilke (3 stars) in Walpurgis' musical of the same name. Zilke (Charlotte Vandermeersch) can care so much about people's fate that her heart breaks and she dies. Through the song of death, she comes back to life again and again. This gift will land her in a gruesome circus whose mistress (Eurudike De Beul) wants to become the queen of worldwide entertainment. Raphael (Geert Vandyck), an entrepreneur speaking in verse who thinks money can buy everything, will eventually save Zilke. She falls for him too.
Judith Vindevogel directs the text by Pieter de Buysser, Death and Awakening in Circus Ngemak, which clearly questions emo culture and the ever-hungry entertainment world that can devour even the purest of feelings. That they do this in a musical form provides a layer of irony. The play still hesitates too much whether it wants to be a fairy tale or not and therefore seems unbalanced.
In any case, Peter Vermeersch composed a beautiful score that is at times jazzy, at others bulging with oriental sounds. The musical twists fit the bizarre undertones of the event perfectly, as do the sometimes clever, sometimes very bland lyrics. But nowhere does Vermeersch get too abstract. That the Flat Earth Society serves as the orchestra can only be called an advantage. There is excellent playing by all and reasonable singing although Walpurgis was rather unlucky in Hasselt. Fifteen minutes before the premiere, a rainstorm erupted and the venue was also rather cramped.
Wilfried Eetezonne, De Morgen

Also at Indian Summer Festival: morbid Belgian fairy tale
****
Garlands of colourful lights hang between the trees. Zilke is played in a fairy-tale location. The Flemish musical theatre company Walpurgis has settled on the outskirts of Goes, in a park with old pear trees and early nightingales. But as peaceful as it looks there at dusk, Zilke's story sounds grim.
The girl whose name resembles the Flemish diminutive of ‘soul’ suffers from a strange symptom. Several times a day, her heart breaks, out of pity. But each time, death revives Zilke. Yes, librettist Pieter de Buysser wrote a morbid fairy tale. And composer Peter Vermeersch provided wild music to go with it.
Music that ranges from the classically melodic to the most burlesque, from the very elevated to the utterly banal. The big band Flat Earth Society, composed mainly of horns, honks away while Zilke sings. Her performer Charlotte Vandermeersch has a lyrical alto and wears a green, almost otherworldly outfit.
Unfortunately, Zilke's mother exploits her daughter's gift. Combining death and awakening, the girl has to go to the circus against her will. There she performs amidst rancid acts and at night she is locked in a cage.
What the makers mean by all this remains somewhat enigmatic. Criticism of the entertainment industry buying innocent souls is certainly among them, but more important is the artistic freedom offered by the mixture of circus, cabinet of curiosities and variety theatre. Director Judith Vindevogel indulges in grotesque characters and shrill, colourful images. The text rhymes, the rhythm is right, the tension lasts for a long time. The Zeeland Nazomerfestival shimmers - just a few more days.
Anneriek De Jong, NRC Next

What is being parodied, art or life?
Going to the theatre is almost always a conscious act.
It needs to be planned, possibly booked, specially dressed perhaps, at least left on time. Even in the most open mind, an expectation must then sneak in. And during or afterwards, something has to be done with it. Satisfied, adjusted, set aside. Tested.
Daily work for a critic. Sometimes it would be so much more fun to bump into a performance completely unexpectedly, on the way to the supermarket or to work, and be able to be absorbed in it for a short or long time. Never having suspected him, and then maybe just forgetting about him. Only time stood still for a moment. That's the kind of performance Zilke should be for me. Musical theatre, described as ‘an existential farce’.
Time stands still, life goes on. As I write it, I realise that this is what the protagonist, the girl Zilke, experiences all the time. Absurd fact.
,”Several times a day, overcome with compassion for man's suffering, Zilke's heart breaks and she dies, only to be revived moments later by merciless Death.“ There is a circus act in that, according to her distraught mother, and so the reluctant Zilke must be accommodated in the ailing grandparents” circus. Together with the Iraqi shepherd Abbas, with whom she falls in love after yet another resurrection, she is kidnapped for that very purpose. "Then suddenly Raphael appears on the scene, a young entrepreneur who is madly in love with Zilke and thinks money and love can buy everything." A madcap melodrama with surprising, nonsensical and unclear endings.
Every circus has an orchestra. Here, that's Flat Earth Society, a 14-piece company led by Peter Vermeersch. Makers of music that cannot really be described. Jazz, rock, opera, everything can be recognised in it. Pure improvisation, it seems, but probably with a clever score nonetheless. Not a minute is silent or quiet on stage. Stirring circus music, melodramatic opera, cheerful jazz to set the whole crazy story with an expressionistic swing.
And crazy it gets, every now and then. Amusing highlight is the undisguised sexual show by the two assistants of the expired magician Bernard. Patsy Andersuitgedraaid and Greet Van Dieperin. Deep into it, they certainly go. More poetic is shepherd Abbas' show with his seven goats. Not a goat in sight, and yet all seven of them are there, with their artful jumps, over their master, through the hoop...
A king's drama unfolds, seemingly greater in number than Hamlet, but considerably more comical and silly than its great example. Zilke is one big parody. You know that. Even if you don't even remember what is being parodied, art or life. You might like to know, but it won't be that simple.
While writing this review, I am sitting listening to Flat Earth Society's music (www.fes.be, click on ‘listen Answer Songs’ for some captivating excerpts) and already have plenty of regrets about not using my ears better. What have I missed by relying mainly on my eyes? You desperately need all four (and especially those first two), during this Zilke. Grab them! And it will make you happiest if, for once, you leave your expectations at home. Just, accidentally forgetting...
Willem Nijssen, PZC

On the blog of Rolf Bosboom, journalist based in Zeeland:

A first tip of the veil still shrouding the Zeeland Nazomerfestival is being lifted these days in Hasselt (B), during the visit-worthy festival Theater op de Markt. There, the production Zilke can be seen, one of four site-specific performances during the Zeeland festival in a few weeks' time. The venue will then be Stadspark de Hollandsche Hoeve in Goes. In Hasselt, it will be staged in a courtyard in the city itself, bordered by a monastery.
Zilke is a wondrous production, an initially almost unwatchable story about the girl Zilke who dies several times a day only to be brought back to life by death. Her mother exploits her by elevating Zilke to a circus act. It gradually becomes clear how much everything can be seen as metaphor, without fleshing it out in detail.
The play is a mixture of circus, parable, musical, variety and whatnot, with especially beautiful music by Peter Vermeersch, performed by his Flat Earth Society. The beautiful Charlotte Vandermeersch convinces in the title role. Not everyone will get off on Zilke, but at least the Indian Summer Festival is awaiting a remarkable, bold production.
In Hasselt, it was nice to see the nuns occasionally push open the curtains to see what was going on in the square, but soon they thought theirs and one by one the lights went out, especially after the highly scabrous scene of ‘Patsy Andersuitgedraaid’ and ‘Greet Van Dieperin’.