Linguistic Unfamiliarity:
Thoughts on Weg met Eddy Bellegueule (The End of Eddy) 

Sam Pout

27 Nov 2024

It was literally all Dutch to me, but it was also one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen. 

Recently, I was lucky enough to visit Amsterdam for the first time, one of the friendliest cities I’ve ever visited! Shopkeepers, waiters and drag queens alike are all genuinely pleased to see you and evidence it by actually smiling at you. There’s an openness about them which feels, and is, 100% pure. It’s crazy to think of such a homogeneous welcome to the average London dweller - they’re so open, their windows don’t even have curtains. If you’re considering it, go! The canals are beautiful, the nightlife is great, and there’s plenty of great shops including a Condomerie with a plethora of phallically protective souvenirs to take home with you.

One thing on my bucket list was to see some theatre, I didn’t mind what, as long as it was Dutch. I opted for the renowned Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and saw Weg met Eddy Bellegueule (The End of Eddy), an adaptation of Édouard Louis’s novel. Unsurprisingly I was surrounded by Dutch people, happily so, but there were no English surtitles and I had no knowledge of the original story. The phrase it was all Dutch to me has never been used more operatively. However, the irony is… it was one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.

Eddy is told by four performers, each playing Eddy as well as other characters the protagonist encounters in this coming of age and sexuality. The story is dark, sometimes brutal, with inflections of intimacy and ecstasy. I’m hesitant to research into the rest of the story for want of reading Louis’ source novel without spoilers, so bear in mind what I say is intuited.

This short essay is a collection of thoughts on the production and my experience of watching a foreign language play without help. It was a new experience, but I don’t want to claim my thoughts are original; plenty of people who consume foreign language work may think I’m stating the obvious. There’s also something to be said of my privilege being a native English speaker who can easily access and understand performance made for the predominantly English speaking world, eg. West End, Broadway, Hollywood. I chose to see this production because I wanted to unsettle my habitual experience of theatre-going and to take a bite of foreign art.

What was profound about my visit was the experience of being alienated through linguistic unfamiliarity. It corroborated a few thoughts I’ve recently had, and exposed me to new ways of viewing performance. Maybe, these collected thoughts might also shift your way of viewing, or even inspire you to do the same?

Rules of Physicality

The story was often narrated through direct address. These moments the story was in limbo, as if zooming out of one time pocket of the world and flying over to another, much like the Tardis or when Harry Potter dunks his head in that magic sink. Actors fell into the story by extending a leg in stasis, then landing on to it to mark the start of a scene. These suspended moments seemed to drift during the narration, when suddenly gravity seemed to land us, and the actors bodies, back into the story. Perhaps to the native speaker, this physicality may have been on the nose, however for me, it was an elegant physical rule to mark the transition between narration and action.

Choices in a performative physicality also included how actors presented archetypal characters. A slumped posture suggested teenager, pitched voices suggested gender and/or hierarchy, smooth movement suggested possible lover. Due to my reliance of physicality to provide evidence for story, I found myself examining the energy in limbs, shifts in weight and centres of gravity. This physical quality didn’t veer into Commedia dell’arte, but I sensed an strong awareness of Laban’s efforts which I was grateful for. 

When exploring character physically, there is always a danger of falling into stereotype, I often see it in the rehearsal room. Adhering to stereotype can create familiarity, and there’s often a comfortable humour in that, but it can also mask the writer’s work in creating complex characters. It also reminded me of the danger of physical para-phrasing, eg. fist = anger or smile = affection, in big spaces it can work, but in a small studio, it can crowd the stage and harm character by simplifying their actions. 

Watching Eddy reminded me the importance of physical evidence, it not only physically marked the structure of storytelling, but also demonstrated the hierarchies of character and importantly inferred their intentions. Sometimes the text’s content is enough for this, but consider the writing of Harold Pinter, physicality is immensely important for embodying the action. If tackling Betrayal for example, how unnerving would it be if the director was to aid an actor’s physicality when they aren’t used to observing it in other people’s work?

Tonal Shit

Sex is hard to stage physically, ethically and logistically, for this reason, I mentally ‘collect’ theatrical sex scenes so I remember what works and might not. I often think of the tender but ethically ambiguous sex in Sarah Kane’s Cleansed, or the urgent sexual moment in Suzan-Lori Parks White Noise as the we all observed the act from all angles, a veritable egalitarian viewing experience at The Bridge Theatre. I’ve also seen directors embrace the proxemics of ensemble (The Inheritance, Young Vic 2018) as the audience are asked to use their imagination inspired by the disjointed moment on stage. 

How director Eline Arbo tackled it, is unlike no other I’ve seen before. I’m reluctant to share details because the moment’s unexpectedness was a reason for its magic. All I’ll say is that the ensemble’s movements under specific lighting took a moment of ecstasy into the realm of beautiful surreality. 

Often dramaturgs will question the causality of a playwright’s plot, even if the structure is unchronological. Causality is logic which the audience sometimes rest on in order to face elements which are uncertain. Although, there’s always room for a Deus ex Machina moment - if used well! For someone who was clinging on to anything I could to understand story, the abruptness of the sex scene in Eddy felt random, unprovoked and impulsive, I suppose what sex often can be. It’s alien quality to the rest of the production gave it texture, it floated out of the show and glided onto a new plain which suddenly landed with a destructive force. A moment which gave the gravitational rule (mentioned previously) a new dimension.

I use Laban with playwrights because I think it highlights the tone of a line or a scene which actioning can’t. Assigning an effort to a line can highlight a scene’s, structure which gives the playwright an indication of the audience’s journey. Eddy is brutal, full of slashes and punches; Arbo’s staging of sex was light and sustained, and yet direct, thus a peak of ecstasy within a turbulent story. 

Efforts inform tone which transcends language, the specificity of tone aligned me with the rest of the audience as the production influenced the audience’s state of being. Traditionally an exercise for physicality, I implore writers and directors consider Laban more. It’s another perspective of defining tone and is useful for understanding structure. Actioning requires analysis from both the actor and the audience; tone is more intuitive and thus more accessible for the audience because it hits us in the feels before analysis takes place. If you want an audience to be together, Laban, or tone, may be an answer to ensure you homogenise the audience within a captivating moment. 

Theatre as Dance

Currently, I find the most financially accessible way of engaging in theatre is reading it, I read a lot more work that I see. When I’m reading, language is the key to imagining; when I’m watching, production now enlivens my experience by presenting itself as dance, I think because my attention is more acute to bodies in a space. 

It makes more sense the more I think about it. There is a rhythm to language and how people talk: a script is a score, the actors are the dancers. Miriam Battye’s Strategic Love Play arguably has the pace of a Quickstep, where Benedict Lombe’s Shifters might seem more like a Rumba. I don’t know enough about Dance to assign one to Eddy, there are too many dynamics to contain it within one anyway.

Sometimes, there’s a danger for the director to rely too heavily on the text and how the actors say it. Removing linguistic familiarity challenges one to find the familiar, if physicality is under-appreciated, why should this not just be a radio play? Or a table read? Bodies in space are not mouthpieces, they are vulnerable engines which can protect or destroy each other. Bodies can say so much in addition to the words, this may be obvious but thinking so can lead to naivety.

Perhaps it’s personal taste, but I think it’s a shame when I see work which hasn’t been rigorous, a lack of is more obvious than one may think. This kind of rigour builds a foundation which withstands the kind of scrutiny I had when watching Eddy. This makes an actor’s interpretation bulletproof, specific, and so much more affective. 

I’m not a director, so feel free to claim I have no place to suggest what might benefit one. But, if I have anything to offer, it’s that I strongly suggest directors watch more dance. Watch foreign work and don’t watch it comfortably. Dare yourself to be exposed and work for the meaning. You may recognise an undesired simplicity, or discover unexpected qualities of performance which you may love and thus appropriate. 

Seeing theatre as Dance may not be a helpful lens for you, if you’ve read this far then I’m sorry for wasting your time, but at least you considered it? A writer will find the words and put them in an order which creates story, embellishes character and trigger action. There is evidence in the text already, I think it’s the director’s job to find what other evidence the audience may or may not need to enliven the story - find what isn’t been already said. 

Do you agree?

Perhaps it was not knowing the language which made the experience a novelty. If performed in English, I might not have thought Eddy to be personally seminal. However, if it was performed in English, I may have been naive to the minute details and the swells of energy might be less evocative.

At the start of this essay, I mentioned I haven’t researched into the Louis’ source text, but I did leave the theatre wanting to read it. People who know the book, or even saw the show in English or with surtitles may be thinking ‘you’re not missing out on much’, or perhaps thinking ‘shit, you’re not ready to read it’ and suggest armouring myself as if about to read A Little Life. I don’t know if you agree with what I’ve thought, if you’ve seen it, let me know - but don’t spoil the story for me!

For various reasons, some out of our control, British theatre is becoming more commercial, its heart is becoming harder to find. I think we have a lot to learn from European theatre, in performance but also how its made. What I do know is that I am returning to the ITA, or make a visit to other venues like the TOBACCO Theater. Heart is often found at fringe festivals, perhaps the lack of heart is down to losing festivals like Vaults Fest (London) and/or the commercialisation of such events. Amsterdam has its Fringe festival 4-14th September 2025, yes several months ahead, but I’m itching to discover more. Who’s joining me?!

About Internationaal Theater Amsterdam

About the show