''Beschuit met muisjes'' is a
tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragedy, tragic and comedy, comic forms. Most often seen in drama, dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the ov ...
by Dutch playwright
Herman Heijermans
Herman Heijermans (3 December 1864 – 22 November 1924), was a Dutch writer.
Heijermans was born in Rotterdam, into a liberal Jewish family, the fifth of the 11 children of Herman and Matilda (Moses) Spiers. Painter Marie Heijermans was his ...
. First performed on 24 December 1910 in Amsterdam, it is one of Heijermans' lesser-known plays.
Plot
The play follows the family of Prosper Bien Aime, who own a run-down
pension
A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...
. Their lives are turned upside down when Prosper's estranged brother unexpectedly shows up and dies at the dinner table, leaving the others to sort out what to do with his sizable inheritance. Another unexpected guest, the brother's wife Pollie, disturbs these plans, especially when it turns out she's pregnant (leading Prosper to call for ''
beschuit met muisjes
(; ) is a traditional Dutch bread topping. While customary on bread, they are traditionally eaten on ''beschuit'', or rusk. Muisjes is a registered trademark of Koninklijke De Ruijter BV. ''Muisjes'' are made of aniseeds with a sugared and co ...
'', a traditional Dutch snack served when babies are born).
Performances
The play has been performed by Amsterdam company
Toneelgroep Oostpool (and its predecessor, Toneelgroep Theater). In 2014 Oostpool presented the play on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Heijermans' birth,
in a performance praised in ''
de Volkskrant
''de Volkskrant'' (; ''The People's Paper'') is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. Founded in 1919, it has a nationwide circulation of about 250,000.
Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, ''de Volkskrant'' today is a medium-sized c ...
''.
A review by Henri Drost for the ''
Theaterkrant'' was strongly negative, and said the strong text deserved a better production.
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References
External links
Complete text
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beschuit met muisjes
1910 plays
Dutch plays
Plays set in the Netherlands
Plays set in the 1910s