Welcome!
Beumer & Drost (Deventer, The Netherlands) bring on average 120 theatre shows annually for a broad (family) audience. Ingredients like film, music, mime, and inventive use of language make for shows that challenge the audience’s imagination.
We also play our shows abroad. Below you’ll find information in English about our shows Chuck & Charlene and Department Store.
Please contact us if you’re interested in our work.
Kind regards,
Toneelschap Beumer & Drost
DEPARTMENT STORE
Consolation for sale in Beumer & Drost’s ‘Department Store’
“A day without spending is a day wasted”
Toneelschap Beumer & Drost present the familyshow Department Store.
A show packed with music and images about a department store where nothing is as pretty as it initially appears. Here consolation is for sale, freshly wrapped or deep frozen. But just for how long does consolation keep?
Department Store is a theatric performance about the apparent malleability of identity.
High heeled characters dressed in the latest fashion parade on stage as if on a Paris catwalk between the futuristic mirror columns created by Tatyana van Walsum. Who are we? Who do we want to be? These questions arise in absurd and funny ways in the course of this performance.
Pressquotes:
“The short scenes are absurd and evenslightly alienating, but each contains humor appealing to both young and old alike.”
“The humor and courage shown by the characters in the way they show their physique and their convictions makes one curious for more.”
“With their show Department Store Toneelschap Beumer & Drost have succeeded to make the public think about their own spending behavior without a snippet of preaching.”
“Department Store is a well achieved, funny, and layered family theatre show for everyone age 8 and over.”
Theaterjournaal– Yara Gomperts – January 2014
“Department Store is an absurdist’s j’accuse against consumerism. The actors’ movements across stage are gracious and their costumes are ingenious. I had a visual feast.”
“During the first fifteen minutes the actors don’t utter a single word. I call that chutzpah, in a show also for children. But the audience sat mesmerized.”
Weekkrant De Toren – Shirley Domingus – April 2014
Department Store (8+) was conceived and created by Lisa Groothof conjunction with Silver Cricket winners Maurits van den Berg and Sacha Muller.
Credits:
Written by: Maurits van den Berg, Lisa Groothof en SachaMuller
Directed by: Gijs de Lange
Decor: Tatyana van Walsum
Music: William Bakker
Costumes: Ingrid Govers
Builders: Brinkman Decor
Light design, sound & light: Dirk Houthoff
Artistic management: Peter Drost
Executive producer: Géraldine Verhoeven
Graphic design: Merijn Schilte en Robin Vogel
Press agent: Afke Pricker
Theatre season 2015
Here’s a shooting alley, done up to the nines. Red velvet curtains, small prizes, big prizes, targets to shoot at. The carnival attraction is run by an elderly couple (Chuck and Charlene). They look like characters from a western movie who happen to love Balkan Music. Once they were artists. And artists they are still, deep down anyway.
The daily routine of carnival life has taken its toll. Once they lived very different lives, filled with adventure. That is, the lives of Chuck & Charlene, “the singing bank robbers”, Bonnie & Clyde of the Low Lands, Robin Hoods of their era.
They were immensely popular with the majority of the population. And anyway, were they bank robbers for real? Could singing people even be capable of attacking a bank? No shots were ever fired. No one was ever injured. Nay, after listening to Chuck & Charlene’s singing, the toughest character would simply transform to a heart of gold. If misanthropists of ill repute were to cry like children whose toys had been confiscated, the touched bank employees would give them all the money in the vault.
The Lorelei could take lessons.
At the peak of their career dozens of people dressed just like Chuck & Charlene, lived just like C&C, and tried to sing just like C&C… Look-alike contests were held. (Once the real C&C entered for fun and even won fourth prize.)
However, police and authorities go in hot pursuit. These two rebels need to be apprehended, never mind the cost. Rooftop- and car chases ensue but Chuck & Charlene always get away miraculously. Until… that fatal night in the woods…
Chuck & Charlene‘s story will be told in the typical Beumer&Drostian way. With song and dance, and plenty of music. With their peculiar playful puns, and authentic philosophies about life. All this unfolds in a shooting alley with a remarkable twist to it…
On pushing aside the curtain the public gets to see the bizarre and touching world of Chuck & Charlene. Their past lives unfurl by way of two flat wooden dioramas painted in technicolour detail. The images hang from rails, gliding to and fro.
A hotel room, a car chase, it all acquires depth in this Beumer & Drost diorama.
Wonderful “artiste”-costumes replete with glitter complete the atmosphere.
Chuck & Charlene
With rising Dutch theatre and tv star
Britte Lagher (from the series “Overspel” and “HANSA!- the play”)
With the man who overtakes himself sometimes, young old theatre fanatic
Peter Drost.
Eyecandy costumes by
Ingrid Govers
Music by Orkater virtuoso
Kees van der Vooren
Directed by:
Michael Helmerhorst
Written by:
Peter Drost
Beumer & Drost in technicolor.
Roll up, come on along & see the show!
