THE YEAR OF CANCER

About the show

The year of cancer (Het jaar van de kreeft) is about a troublesome relationship. The performance is a sequence of absurd, tragicomic and physically exhausting scenes between two desperate people who can neither live with nor without each other. Both lovers are caught in an inescapable spiral of intimacy and detachment, pride and devotion, life and death. A story without romance, about two people who experience love as a fate and a mission. Claus’s novel is a rollercoaster. In short chapters, he draws a portrait of two people who can neither live with nor without each other. In provocative, moving and poetic scenes, we witness the distress caused by a great passion. Claus succeeds in turning a story that would have generated a very bad novel in the hands of lesser authors into an existential drama about angst and a drive towards death. Balancing between pathos and humour, he creates two unforgettable characters in a love story that makes sense in all ages. For Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Luk Perceval adapted one of his favourite novels, The year of cancer. With this bestseller from 1972, Hugo Claus succeeded in writing a novel about love that comprises both the profound and the banale. In short chapters, he paints a portrait of two people who can neither live with nor without each other. What is it that brings two people together when nothing seems to make sense?