What We’re Seeing: WENDE's “The Promise” at PROTOTYPE
“A kaleidoscopic performance of raw passion and psyche… Triumphant and unafraid”
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Video courtesy of PROTOTYPE
If you’re not familiar with Wende, the acclaimed Dutch singer-songwriter, theatre-maker, chansonnière, actress, performer, music producer, and artist-in-residence at the Royal Carré Theatre in Amsterdam… well… I promise you should be.
If you attended The PROTOTYPE Festival this month, you may have been lucky enough to catch the incredibly too brief run of Wende’s seminal theatrical creation The Promise. An exhilarating cabaret concert created and led by Wende in collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre and composed together with renowned English composer Isobel Waller-Bridge (yes, of those Waller-Bridges), The Promise is a lyrical contemplation of identity, origins, and the complexities of womanhood and humanness, featuring a blend of pop, acoustic, experimental, and electronic genres interspersed with Her (what I am dubbing as the protagonist character(s) she embodies, a sort of Everywoman) charming stage patter. In line with this genre-amorphous form of the concert, the subject matter stresses the genre-defying theatricality inherent in the human experience; The Promise seems interested in rawly cracking emotions and experiences open, and whatever shape and sound those discussions took during the creative process is what we get, resulting in a stunning smorgasbord of sonic diversity true to the complexity of life.
This thesis of multifaceted identity exploration is delivered through mesmerizing, exuberant performances by Wende and musicians Nils Davidse, Louise Anna Duggan, and Midori Jaeger. As a vocalist and storyteller, Wende displays the same driving, pulsating, tenderly precise vocal ceramics as Swedish-New Orleanian Theresa Andersson or Tony-winning Alice Ripley. A force to be reckoned with, her voice quivers, electrifies, proclaims, and caresses, signifying an instrument as flexible and versatile as the human spirit she sings about. While the music builds and sonically layers with meticulously rigorous surprise and precision, the show at times feels like Her swirling thoughts are ricocheting as fast as atoms to keep up with the urgency of storytelling, feeling primal, urgent, and vital to excavate these emotions out of Her soul and into the world. As she says at the start of the show, “some things just need to be sung.”
The result is spiritual, creating a palpable electricity in the air and audience. Wende is so convincing, so sincere in her soul-bearing that nothing less than a somatic response to the piece will do; thankfully, the performance builds in brief, natural audience participation via group singalong, allowing the pent up awe and empathy to pour out of us in conversation and mutual aid with the artists at play.
The lyrics, collectively written through workshops by a group of leading female writers associated with the Royal Court Theatre, including EV Crowe, Debris Stevenson, Stef Smith, Somalia Seaton, and Sabrina Mahfouz, delve into themes often overlooked in traditional songbooks, capturing the essence of the female experience. The show’s tone, feminist in its fearlessness, is set early-on with the iconic “I’m a lonely bitch,” an anthem about caring and crafting one’s identity, trying to tell everyone who you think you are as best you can, but still not being able to find quite the right words for it. Sound familiar? I thought so. The lyrical relatability hits with unwavering precision at the heart, regardless of direct personal experience. Sing-along rounds of “I’m not a good mother / I’m not a bad mother / I’m a good enough mother / And that’s good enough for me” unite an audience of strangers, mother or not, in the universal, repetitive mountain climb of vulnerability and self-acceptance. On the flip side of the experience, the titular song is perhaps the most unapologetically feminist (if one had to choose), in that my eyes widened and heart clenched at undoubtedly the first time hearing the subject matter on a stage: a song celebrating choosing not to be a mother, in a gentle and hopeful piece lacking any sign of a socially-imposed dirge.
Throughout the show, whether power anthem or orgasmic rave, Wende’s mesmerizing performance style prevails unique and unmatched (leading to the headlining BroadwayWorld pull quote featured in the video above). Wende’s performance is full-bodied, as if she is a vessel for the Message of the show. Whatever the spirit of the song’s discourse demands, she is convulsing and caressing and commanding about the tiny space with the ease and aplomb of a lioness after a hunt. There is no shirking or self-editing or sorry’s; in fact, one feels an exuberant, magnetic pull to her confidence and stage presence, as if seeing the parts of oneself taught to bury or therapize suddenly promenading on stage in a kaleidoscopic performance of raw passion and psyche.
The performance’s lighting design captures this spotlight on the human psyche (sometimes literally although), adapting to each song’s tone of bombast or intimacy with agility and precision to draw the eye. Staged at times so the musicians strategically circle like parts of a compass, you can tell the ensemble feeds energy off one another, engaged in eye contact and solidarity, parts contributing to a whole.
Triumphant and unafraid, The Promise is a sacred pact between artist and audience to embark on an introspective quest together for 100 minutes, not labeling experiences by preconceived genres and categorization, but embracing the complexity and shades of a shared vibrancy in common womanhood and humanity. The next opportunities to catch this one-of-a-kind experience are at the upcoming Adelaide Festival and HK Arts Festival, but I hope U.S. presenters find another opportunity to host this world-class artistry. Am I starved for more women-centric points of view unmarred by a commercial male gaze? Am I changed because of this performance? As Wende declares in the encore, “Let it be / Let it be a chorus / The whole fucking forest / We are the whole fucking forest.”
Production credits
PROTOTYPE, Stichting WENDE and the Royal Court Theatre London Present
“The Promise”
CONCEPT BY Chloe Lamford & Wende; CREATED BY Chloe Lamford, Wende, Isobel Waller-Bridge & Imogen Knight; WORDS BY E.V Crowe, Sabrina Mahfouz, Somalia Nonyé, Stef Smith & Debris Stevenson; COMPOSED BY Wende & Isobel Waller-Bridge
PERFORMED BY Wende, Nils Davidse, Louise Anna Duggan, & Midori Jaeger
CHOREOGRAPHED BY Imogen Knight; DESIGNED BY Chloe Lamford; ELECTRONIC PRODUCER Jan van Eerd; ADDITIONAL ARRANGEMENT BY Fiona Brice
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Izzy Rabey; CREATIVE PRODUCER Wouter van Ransbeek; THEATRE PRODUCER/BUSINESS MANAGER Ulrike Bürger-Bruijs; MANAGEMENT BY Froukje Bouma; PRODUCTION MANAGER Tim van der Does
ORIGINAL DESIGN AT THE ROYAL COURT THEATRE BY Debbie Duru, Lighting Designer Lee Curran; DESIGN FOR THE DUTCH THEATRE PRODUCTION BY Lighting Designer Freek Ros & Sound Designer Bob Williekens
This presentation of “The Promise” is supported as part of the Dutch Culture USA program of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York.
PROTOTYPE is a co-production of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE.
“The Promise” ran January 10-14, 2024, at HERE Mainstage (145 6th Ave, Manhattan). The running time is 100 minutes with no intermission. For more information, please visit https://prototypefestival.org/shows/the-promise/ and https://wende.nu/.