The Last Days of Emma Blank

Servants fuss around the demanding Emma Blank (Marlies Heuer) in her large lakeside residence. Butler Haneveld (Gene Bervoets) is particularly anxious that all should be just right for the mistress; cook Bella (Annet Malherbe) has to be adaptable with her menu; sulky maid Gonnie (Eva van de Wijdeven) endures the indignity with clear disdain; while handyman Meijer (Gijs Naber) keeps his head down and attempts to repair an old canoe with a hole in it. It's not exactly a happy household, and when Theo (director Alex van Warmerdam) is summoned like a dog, and behaves like one, the atmosphere becomes curiously surreal. It's gradually revealed that the servants aren't servants at all, but Emma's extended family, who have been persuaded to play these roles and put up with her whims and fancies because she is dying, or at least claims to be. It's not long before cracks start to appear in the frequently bizarre façade, however, and Emma's behaviour does nothing to suppress mutinous rumblings. Dutch writer, actor and filmmaker van Warmerdam has reworked his own 1999 play, Adel Blank, to create an unsettling, darkly playful, very funny, and thoroughly relevant comment on class, power, greed and hypocrisy.

Michael Hayden