Bruno Vanden Broecke and Valentijn Dhaenens combined their writing and acting talent, added their fascination for artificial intelligence and brewed Jonathan, a piece like a mind-boggling and witty domino game that sends you home speechless but not empty-handed.
There are those moments that change the appearance of a place forever. There is such a moment in Jonathan. Vanden Broecke sits – as Herman, the son of the deceased Claudine – in the porch of the gate that gives access to the backyard from the KVS scene. While Ennio Morricone’s music is playing, he sits with his body facing the urn at the pulpit. He turns around with a jerk and looks at Valentijn Dhaenes – aka care robot Jonathan. ‘You saw her! You saw her! Tell me about those last nine days of her life for God’s sake. ‘ From the gaze of Vanden Broecke speaks the despair of every person who wants to say something to a deceased loved one …
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There are those moments that change the appearance of a place forever. There is such a moment in Jonathan. Vanden Broecke sits – as Herman, the son of the deceased Claudine – in the porch of the gate that gives access to the backyard from the KVS scene. While Ennio Morricone’s music is playing, he sits with his body facing the urn at the pulpit. He turns around with a jerk and looks at Valentijn Dhaenes – aka care robot Jonathan. ‘You saw her! You saw her! Tell me about those last nine days of her life for God’s sake. ‘ From the gaze of Vanden Broecke speaks the despair of every person who wants to say something to a deceased loved one … Like the stairs of De Munt, never again as dead gray stones because we once met Nick Cave. For example, we will never again casually pass through that scene at the rear of the KVS, where a beautiful lamp below the gate hangs that lights up deep yellow when dusk falls. That key scene from Jonathan, the performance that premiered yesterday in the backyard of the KVS Bol, will always light up in our memories from now on. – passing, thanks to that one key scene The piece is still steaming. It’s that fresh off the press. But Valenijn Dhaenens and Bruno Vanden Broecke do not allow themselves to be caught in a hurry. The text was created during the lockdown – ‘we walked for hours through the Rivierenhof and Te Boelaerpark’, Vanden Broecke recently told Knack – and it also partly concerns that period. Fortunately, it is also about much more than that. Although the first part of the piece initially made us a bit afraid that Jonathan would become more than a rather predictable ‘corona piece’ in a form that nods to the unforgettable, impressive solo Mission from 2007. On an unsightly small stage – just as wide as the gate that gives access to the beautiful scene of the KVS Bol – stands a pupiter. Vanden Broecke enters as Herman. The man is nervous. He carries a bronze urn under his arm with a beautiful cloverleaf. It is immediately clear that we are at the farewell service of Claudine, Herman’s mother. Vanden Broecke reads a speech like speeches are read during funeral services. With restrained emotion, on that typical solemn reading tone. We listen and cannot prevent us from thinking: “Gentlemen, aren’t we going to experience more than this?” Someone from the audience is given the floor, is led by Herman to the pupil and reads a wonderful anecdote about how Claudine – who was a primary school teacher, it turns out – did not forget a single child she ever had in class. Then it’s Jonathan – icy and therefore very powerfully played by Valentijn Dhaenens – his turn. He is a care robot but moves and talks like a normal person. Only his impassive face and the emotionless way with which he stirs up the troubled youth of Claudine and Herman during his speech, betray that he has no heart. Beautiful. But we want more, because in this way Jonathan remains a somewhat thin brother of Missie, a monologue by Vanden Broecke in which he looks back like an old missionary on his eventful life in Congo. Don’t worry, we get more. During that scene in which music by Ennio Morricone resounds – Claudine was a fan – is the tipping point. That is the moment when Vanden Broecke slaps all the ‘domino stones’ that Dhaenens and he carefully incorporated into the text. In an increasingly painful and strangely enough, therefore also very witty dialogue between Jonathan and Herman, everything that was previously told turns out to be the seed for Herman’s question to Jonathan. “You talked a lot, what has she said in the last days?” Did she scare you? ‘ “What did you sing to her?” How did the end go? ”Care robot Jonathan gives all the answers in a sometimes nauseatingly honest way. The two actors play this wonderfully. Dhaenens is cool impassivity itself, tight in the dark blue suit with the typical black turtleneck. Vanden Broecke lets emotions rage through his body. The small stage is gradually becoming too small, fortunately there is the wide back square. That produces incredibly witty scenes. However, those scenes reveal a painful insight. However much Jonathan is programmed to apologize when he detects that his human interlocutor is upset, he steps harder and harder on Herman’s heart. Simply because he reasons from facts and not from emotions. For each answer it becomes eerily clear what the major handicap of artificial intelligence is for the time being: lack of empathy. The more intelligent such robots will become, the more dangerous they can be if, apart from all the data they store in their ‘system’, they do not understand what it is to like to see, to like to live. Vanden Broecke and Dhaenens bring this inability to a head in a shocking apotheosis. With a prayer card in hand that only increases your bewilderment, you leave the dimly lit square. Jonathan could be more inventive in terms of form, but the game and the text are very strong. This duo has flawlessly succeeded in softening what broke everyone’s heart this spring – the conditions in the residential care centers and the lonely dying – into a piece that makes you laugh, moves you and plant a seed of healthy distrust of artificial intelligence in your head. Respect.
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