The new musical Upper Chambers shows how things were in the fifties in America

Producer Lucas van der Hut has sold his house and luckily has a legacy behind him. Because music upper roomsA futuristic story, set in 1957 America, definitely happens.

Press presentation of the concert upper rooms In a rehearsal room at Sloterdijk station, last month some were impressed and fellow producers failed to attend. It’s frustrating, but producer and screenwriter Lucas van der Hut understands: “There are no big names. upper roomsThe big producers are busy with their own things and the small ones see me as a competitor.

Van der Hut has been working for four years upper rooms Get off the ground. The idea for the story came to him after reading The beautiful room is empty, a novel by Edmund White. “I don’t see anything in the traditional boy-meets-girl story and boy-meets-boy story, which is close to me and I think it’s already a cliché. The White Paper discusses this Gay liberation In the United States, from the 1940s to the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, a real gay uprising, a tricky triangular relationship develops between a young woman, a beatnik and an elderly psychiatrist. I found that an intriguing relationship could tell a good story about a generation’s conflict with fifties oppression and beatnik rebellion against it.

American in Amsterdam

Persuading Michael Dieterich to direct the production was not difficult, as he recognized much of his own childhood in California in van der Hut’s script. “I come from a show business family on my mother’s side,” says Dieterich. “He sang in Glenn Miller’s band, toured America and made movies. My father came from a conservative family. My parents divorced when I was one and a half years old, and the judge handed me over to my father. It was very special in the early 1970s, but it was the wild life of my birth mother. Says a lot about. During the trial, my father’s lawyer said that my mother smelled of alcohol.

“My father supported all his children financially, but not me. I wanted to go to the theater, but when he saw me on stage as a boy and heard me sing a song, he thought of his ex-wife and was afraid that I would go in the same alcoholic direction with lots of parties. Meetings Then, he was proud when he noticed that I didn’t accept the negative sides of the show world.

“Into the Father upper rooms It is the same. He wants his son to be a judge, while Mom represents the Hollywood side of the drama. It’s really a coincidence that this storyline is the same as our house. Lucas knew nothing about it.

drag queen

Dieterich came to Amsterdam in 1993 with a group of theater friends. It was a stopover on the way to a performance at the Edinburgh Theater Festival. That performance never happened. Dieterich got a role drag queen He soon learned Dutch in the Lido Hotel’s showroom.

One evening, Joop van den Ende’s casting director, Marianne Wijnkoop, was in the room. It surprised her that she could joke in American Dutch. He suggested she audition for an ensemble role in the musical Evita. Dieterich later had no desire to return to New York, where he pursued his theatrical training. Now he has a permanent position as a musician and choreographer.

Financial risk

upper rooms is the second production of Musical opera, the production company Van der Hut founded ten years ago. The producer warmed to the renaissance of music Chekhov Now getting into a major production by Robert Long.

Van der Hut reflects Albert Verlinde Piaf, his first musical. Van der Hut has even sold his house, leaving him financially broke upper rooms Catch, but he believes more than anything upper rooms Manages to gain a place in the densely populated producer world. Het Motorblok, an arts group with rehearsal space and a black box theater in an old factory building in Jan, is his temporary base.

Upcoming talent

Names of van der Hut and Dieterich upper rooms Together, ticket sales won’t explode immediately. Dietrich, however, is very happy. “They are all upcoming stars who already have a lot of experience in professional music Orange soldier And Rocky Horror Show,” he says.

Dieterich also has concerts like Albert Verlinde Stupidity And Canopy bed Directed. According to Dieterich, Albert already had the names of the people who were to play alongside him in the production. “It’s nice to have stars, but I like the cast that I’ve chosen myself. If you’ve got your performance right, you’ve already done eighty percent of the job, and I can see that in this young, enthusiastic group. When we start rehearsing, they know all the lyrics, and then you get the inside of the story. Let’s get started now, because even if there’s a big Cadillac on stage, this music is about more than form.

UPPER ROOMS, 11 TO 14/5 IN HEAD MOTORBLOCK, EAST SIDE 381, JANDAM.