De Eindtijd Revue

How do you make a show about the Apocalypse when you’re in the middle of it? Come and see!

Following the success of De Gabber Opera (VSCD Mime and Performance Prize 2022), URLAND is storming theaters with an ominous theatrical spectacle about the End Times. De Eindtijd Revue is an apocalyptic and ominous theatrical feast in which all possible endings and End Time stories clash. URLAND’s credo is “DESPAIR GIVES LIFE” (wanhoop doet leven). And this performance asks: how do we learn to despair? How do we prepare?

The Apocalypse keeps popping up in human history, appearing to be a social, historical phenomenon. From the Ragnarok to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the calendar of the Mayans to today’s Doomsday preppers. It is sometimes a promise, sometimes a warning, or yet more of an incantation. URLAND is in need of the poetry, music and ritual that have long connected humans in the fear of the All-consuming Nothingness.

URLAND invites quirky performers and forms a vibrant ad hoc collective that speaks many theatrical languages. We see a theater group preparing for the extreme. The multidisciplinary performance is one big warm-up for‘De Eindtijd Revue’ that will take place that evening, and leading up to the starting time, the revue passes the review. The doom metal band DEATH.DEF (the revue’s house band) does the final sound check, the collective dance of death is highlighted, we hear snatches from the Edda and an aria from Wagner’s Ring, while one of the performers does some more yoga on the back stage and the technician sets his lights. There are false prophets, a real black hole, obscure mystery guests and a children’s choir from Rotterdam.

The performance is musical, visual, poetic, and has a happening-like character. Together the performers create a grand new ritual that playfully is also an ode to the theater business. URLAND clings to the fact that in mythology, every End Time also heralds a new beginning. The warm-up is complete. Darkness is onset. Despair gives life.

This performance has both English and Dutch surtitles.

Warning: a stroboscope is used in this performance