Soldier of Orange

Sorry I didn't post anything for this day, instead you get two post for today, since it just became January the 14th a few minutes ago. Not that you care if I don't post for a day, but this time I actually have something to tell you about. So behold, the one and only Dutch Wartime Musical.

I am the female version of gay, I adore musicals, it's what I breathe to feel alive. Tonight I had a splendid evening with a very, very impressive piece of Dutch musicalship. Soldier of Orange is not just a musical, it is a experience on its own. When most think musical, they think of dusty theatres with just one stage and everything happens there, stage changes in between and some light effects to cover up the boring background. Soldier of Orange did it a little different, the stage is divided in several parts around a circle on which they have build the grandstand, including a sea with real water and an outdoor scene with a real Dakota war aircraft and real rain coming from the sky. This all build in the old hangar in Valkenburg, where the last scene of the book, film and musical takes place, when Queen Wilhelmina lands when she returns to the Netherlands after her stay in London.

It was a visual spectacle with beautiful decor to match wartime era student rooms. Instead of curtains they used a movable wall on which their showed scenery, paper articles, documentary video clips and poster all from the WWII. They also used it to extend the stage, for example the whole wall figured as the Rapenburg (street) in Leiden where the students lived and where they studied at the University of Leiden when the war started. As some of you might now, I live very close to Leiden and am rather familiar with its beautiful streets, of which Rapenburg is one of the most known and most beautiful one with its bridges  over the moat and beautiful large and old manors and its University at the end of the street.

Our Soldier of Orange had his student home right above the entrance of this pub

The story is about how student of the University of Leiden realise that after the Germans have invaded the Netherlands nothing will be the same and nothing will be the same. Eric Hazelhoff our protagonist is 23 when he hears on the radio how German parachute troops have landed right behind the Dutch and German border, soon after Rotterdam is bombed as they watch the black smoke rise from the once beautiful city somewhere on the beach, the government gives in and from that day the Netherland is part of the Dritte Reich. They no longer know who to trust and realise that their closest friends might be wrong (NSB'er/Nazi). Eric wants to fight against the Germans but knows that it will only work when they are part of the rebellion, so he and his girlfriend play tricks on the Germans until they get caught. They let him go but not soon after he realises it is no longer safe for him and he wants to flee to England. There he meets the Queen and starts operation Contact Holland in which they send his friend Fred back to the Netherlands to stay in touch with the other side so the Queen will know what to do. This plan fails as the girlfriend of Eric gets caught and send to a camp where she dies in the end. Fred finds out because their former friend who turned Nazi has a girlfriend who can't bear to see her best friend get send to camp warns Fred that their so called friend Paul is a betrayer. Both Fred and Paul get killed. That is when Eric decided to join the RAF, for which he bombs Berlin. Not much later the Dutch grounds are not longer occupied by the Germans and in a spectacular scene in which a Dakota aircraft drives a bit around the outdoor stage, motors on, puts Queen Wilhelmina back on Dutch soil. 

It is the most beautiful musical I have seen in my still short life. I could never have thought that they could make a musical is so many different dimensions. You not only see and hear the story, you can even smell the gasoline of the motorcycles with which they drove around the circle stage, you could smell the bleach of the water (not so authentic), you could feel the bombs dropping on Rotterdam and of course, you could feel the "lovely spring day", make that a lovely rainy January day. The musical performances of the actors was also very good. It was moving, it was real, it was there in heart and soul and in the air, it was everywhere. You entered the war and you couldn't escape it, while the bombs fell on their prestigious stuck up fraternity "Minerva", you felt the bombs too, the fear. For the first time in my life WWII was real, right in front of me.

Our faithful actors on airfield Valkenburg where the TheatreHangar now is

Funny how I realised that nothing really has changed, we are still doing the same things only in a modern world. This is not freedom we have, it is just the illusion of what freedom is. We no longer fight for our freedom because we think we have it all, we don't, they all just tell us we do, funny how things don't change no matter how much we learn.

Trailer



Tomorrow is Today (Morgen is Vandaag)