The Shows
Imagine if Charlie Chaplin binge watched Monty Python, then immediately recorded an album with Benny Goodman, took the finished record, and dropped it off a ladder onto Buster Keaton’s grinning head. That’s a Släpstick show: packed with music, theater, humor, spectacle, melancholy, variété, song and dance, and drawing inspiration from the great masters, like Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers.
Schërzo
After demolishing more than their fair share of theater and festival stages, Släpstick are turning their mischievous attentions to the grand concert halls of Europe and beyond! Scherzö: a clown-esque concerto for the ages, in which a seemingly highbrow evening of classical repertoire glissandos into a bacchanal of comical mishaps and absurdity. Neither foppy-wigged composers nor their magnum opus are safe from this buffoonery. Behold as a marble bust of Beethoven comes alive and challenges his fellow sculptures to a yodeling battle-royale! Clutch your breast as Schubert’s Erlkönig lament’s his dying son while prancing on a trampoline! Gasp in amazement as the ghost of George Gershwin accompanies a flotilla of rolling instruments- an entire symphony orchestra played by only five musicians and led by an inflatable conductor! It's Chaplin meets Tchaikovsky, Buster versus Bernstein, and Groucho Marx does Mozart, all rolled up into one raucous oeuvre that deftly mocks the "pomp" in Pomp and Circumstance. Släpstick presents Scherzö: an evening of classical music as you’ve never experienced before. Don’t call it a come Bach, it sure ain't no symphony, and it’s SO not a sonata! Scherzö!
Häppy hour
‘Häppy Hour’ is the Corona-proof clownery that we all need! Släpstick has been busy throughout these crazy times; oiling, whittling, and finetuning the best bits of the show ‘Släpstick, in order to present you with a streamlined production that sweeps you off your feet in a tornado of gags, laughs, stunts and virtuosic musical pearls. Sprinkle in a few fresh, never-before-seen scenes and songs, and you’ve got the ultimate “Släpstick: Häppy Hour” cocktail, guaranteed to wash away your daily woes!
ALL HANDS ON DECK
(IN COLLABORATION WITH SCAPINO BALLET)
Two companies join forces in All Hands On Deck, in a spectacular collaboration. Scapino Ballet and Wërelbänd bring out the best in each other in a performance full of
wonderful combinations of dance, humor, music and theater. The five members of the musical theater group Wereldband are not only first class musicians, but also masterful variété artists. In All Hands On Deck, together with the Scapino dancers, they embark on a turbulent sail, full of bizarre and absurd situations. The choreographer Ed Wubbe dares the waves with singing dancers and dancing musical comedians. The sailor’s life
allows for beautiful encounters and entertaining scenarios, but takes its toll as well. As the trip unfolds, the boundary between fantasy and reality blurs and life on board becomes increasingly surreal. This is a show about longing, happiness, goodbyes, love, hardships and homesickness. The collaboration between Scapino Ballet Rotterdam and Släpstick has produced a surprising array of combinations of dance, humor, slapstick, music and theater.
SLäpstick
Imagine yourself at a 1920’s fairground: the smell of popcorn teases your nose, while a smooth-talking carnival worker dares you to take your best shot. Five vagabond musicians stroll the midway: one moment Comedian Harmonists serenading a stately dame, the next they’re in a makeshift boxing ring, circling each other in time to a folky melody. Armed with a seemingly endless plethora of musical instruments, the five members of Släpstick transport you to a bygone era full of whimsy and virtuosic tomfoolery. Släpstick is an ode to musical comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Marx Brothers, Spike Jones, and Laurel & Hardy. A spectacular collection of musical and humorous acts rooted in the slapstick tradition, but with a modern twist. Släpstick: a whirlwind evening of song, dance, comedy, melancholy and nostalgia.
Playground
Muziek, theater, humor
Cases full of instruments, bouncy balls, pogo sticks and trampolines have all been loaded into the tourbus! Everything is possible in the Släpstick’s playground: The Beach Boys surfing the North Sea coast, Schubert bounding in the air, and Popeye sailing in from Brazil. In ‘Playground’ Släpstick brings you more instruments, more genial musical finds, and more hilarious sketches and gags. The music and humour in this show is as surprising as it is infectious: it swings, confounds, inspires, moves- and sounds good doing it!
Cases full of instruments, bouncy balls, pogo sticks and trampolines have all been loaded into the tourbus! Everything is possible in the Släpstick’s playground: The Beach Boys surfing the North Sea coast, Schubert bounding in the air, and Popeye sailing in from Brazil. In ‘Playground’ Släpstick brings you more instruments, more genial musical finds, and more hilarious sketches and gags. The music and humour in this show is as surprising as it is infectious: it swings, confounds, inspires, moves- and sounds good doing it!
KOPMANNEN
Six men. A stark white decor and an insane amount of musical instruments. In this virtuosic spectacle these mind-boggling musicians turn everything on its head. And that head is not quite right… In ‘Kopmannen’ the group creates a musical kaleidoscope, in which the audiences fantasy can run wild. It’s as if the characters from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” escaped, and landed in a Buster Keaton movie. They seem to be searching for something, but keep stumbling into situations that make the day-to-day seem crazy, and the absurd seem normal!
KEET (pronounced KATE)
KEET is pretty. KEET is brash. KEET is musical spectacle from the highest shelf to the lowest foundational brick. Proceed at your own risk… KEET: an iron-clad theatre show that guarantees a sturdy musical framework, bizarre shenanigans, and baffling feats of fancy. Scaffolding gets climbed with wheelbarrows full of saxophones, flutes, drums, tablas, guitars, trombones, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, tubas, recorders, surds, tin whistles, balamas, contrabasses, bass guitars, mandolins, violins, violas, bratch, vibraphones, percussion, accordions, bandoneons, spinets, banjos, slide guitars, jackhammers, PVC pipes, nails guns, and every other imaginable instrument of all shapes and sizes. KEET puts the “work” in work of art!
