08 Oct

20:00

Schuur

Lange Begijnestraat 9, Haarlem

In a dilapidated 1980s villa, a conservative widower clashes with his two adult children—one pregnant and unmarried, the other an AIDS patient—leading to an inevitable confrontation.

Thu, 8 Oct 2026 20:00

Schuur, Haarlem

Fri, 9 Oct 2026 20:00

Schuur, Haarlem

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 20:00

Schuur, Haarlem

Wed, 4 Nov 2026 20:15

TR25 Schouwburg (Kleine Zaal), Rotterdam

Fri, 20 Nov 2026 20:00

Schuur, Haarlem

Sat, 21 Nov 2026 20:00

Schuur, Haarlem

Sun, 22 Nov 2026 15:00

Schuur, Haarlem

Mystical Body

More info & tickets

About Mystical Body

Welcome to the Doornenhof, a dilapidated villa in the eighties. Widower Gijselhart (played by Kirsten Mulder) lives there with his adult children. First one, then both. At the Doornenhof, everyone feels trapped and thinks the other should be locked up.

Ultra-conservative and obsessed with money and purity, he stands in direct opposition to his offspring. Daughter Magda (nicknamed Prul) is unmarried and pregnant by a Jewish man, and son Leendert returns from New York as an AIDS patient. Old wounds are reopened. And when the father of Prul's baby also appears on the scene, a confrontation is inevitable…

Forty years after the publication of Frans Kellendonk's controversial novel, director Koen Verheijden (Jongensuren) brings the story to the stage again. In his characteristic, layered language, Kellendonk captured a year in the life of the broken Gijselhart family. A family that becomes a poignant mirror of the polarized Dutch society at the end of the twentieth century. And forty years later, that image is still surprisingly recognizable.

The Gijselhart family wants nothing more than to belong together, but the harder they try, the further they drift apart. Because as we watch this dysfunctional family, the question inevitably arises: do we really think that we, as a society, are doing better than in Kellendonk's time?

Verheijden opts for a grotesque, sometimes rawly comical style of acting in which humor and discomfort coexist closely. Not to judge, but to make visible how people can lose each other. Precisely when they are trying to hold on to each other.

All performances are surtitled in Dutch and English.