http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/video/ssworldcup-19013964/why-do-the-dutch-wear-orange-20700485#video=20700340

http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=11107175&start=00:00:00

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/06/14/sesay.world.cup.dutch.fans.cnn

That whole “mine is bigger” obsession sometimes leads to interesting contraptions.

Coolest shirt ever, don’t drive like this though.

Wondering about them boxers.

Here’s a question for you, name three essential characteristics of being Dutch. Please respond below.

Just ask the right Shaman…

Lee Blessing’s When We Go Upon The Sea is a “what if” play. What if President George Bush had to appear for the International Criminal Court in The Hague and what if he had to spend his last night as a free man in a luxury hotel on the beach, and what if his butler and his wife were wacky Dutch people who really love to serve. They serve him booze, good conversation, a Dutch history lesson, great sex (off stage unfortunately) and a little comfort. That’s the play, we don’t know what he has been accused of and we also don’t know why he went the The Hague out of his own free will in the first place.

As a Dutchman myself I was looking at a couple of American actors who were committed and focused and did a great job, but nobody told them that Dutch people learn to speak the Queen’s English at school, not South African English. They also don’t drink Grolsch from a beugelfles, they don’t have the little turn with your fingers light switches, the sea is a sea, not an ocean and is certainly not blue. Apparently Bush stays in the only upscale hotel on the shore, which must be the Kurhaus Hotel, but there’s no way you can see the sun rise and sun set from the same room. Also, The Hague is not below sea level and there are no dykes in The Hague, just dunes.

To me this play isn’t finished. There are a few Hansje Brinker references which could have been more poignant if Blessing had invoked Katrina. I didn’t care about the back ground story of Anna-lisa, or Annelies. First because she tells a story of how she was abducted and sold into sex slavery. She says she has a fake name, but she is married to the butler and all is discrete and no condoms are used, so why the fake name? If you are from the Balkans and you look like you are from Hungary (she does like she’s from the Pusta) why pick a random size 7 wooden shoe size name?

This play reminds me of how Shakespeare puts out certain male characters to hang, Othello, Leontes, Lear. He shoves them onto the stage for people to scoff at and to make fun of (yes he does, these are not tragic heroes, please read your history.) Blessing just wants to put Bush on stage like a puppet and do anything he wants with him, that’s the play. Bush doesn’t make any choices and doesn’t fight any battles? Why, because we might feel sympathy for him and the writer doesn’t want us to. Was this a regular prison play the prisoner would decide to flee, especially for this court which hasn’t been ratified by most of the world.

You can see this play in New York, 59E59 Theatres, June 10 – July 3, 2010.