Inspiring City Cinema

On my summer holiday I visited the charming Dutch capital Amsterdam and there I had the chance to enter one of the most beautiful movie theatres I have ever seen. The Pathé Tuschinski Cinema, located in the centre of Amsterdam, really looks like something out of a gothic novel. My instant reaction was that it didn’t matter what movie we saw, as long as I would get to go inside this palace like theatre.

The Tuschinski cinema was created by Polish immigrant Abraham Icek Tuschinski and opened to the public in 1921. Its interior as well as the facade is an overwhelming mixture of art deco architecture and jugende style details. Especially the foyer has amazing details of lamps and wall decorations. Even the door handles and carpets are special.  

The Tuschinski as a piece of history

There are several auditoriums in the Tuschinski cinema. The main one has room for 1200 people and was designed to also work also as a theatre stage. Originally it had an orchestra of 16 instruments to accompany the performances. And in its time the Tuschinski has been visited by such glamorous stars as Edith Piaf, Marlene Detrich and Josephine Baker.

It is not only in art and entertainment history that the Tuschinski cinema has a legacy. The personal tragedy of founder Abraham Tuscheski connects the cinema to another and graver part of world history. During the Nazi occupation of Holland in 1940-45 Mr. Tuschinski and most of his family was killed in German concentration camps. The cinema was then given the non-Jewish name ‘Tivoli’, however after the war its original name back was returned.

It was not difficult to imagine myself back in the 20s and 30s as I wondered around the empty halls of the main auditorium. There are several side rooms to that work like small lounge areas all with exquisite interior. There is supposed to be a Japanese tea room there somewhere too, but I did not get to see that.
Whatever movie you are about to see in that cinema the magic of the place gets your imagination working. I only wish that more modern cinemas would  be more bold when it comes to inspiring decor.

One winter morning in Copenhagen

Home of Finn Juhl

Place of the month May:
In this positively amazing summer weather I can’t find any good excuses to stay inside anymore. So I made my first ever visit to the Ordrupgaard museum north of Copenhagen.

The garden there is lovely and the mix of the original building with the new one is interesting and beautiful.
Right next to Ordrupgaard is the house and home of Danish designer and architect Finn Juhl who died in 1989. His home is a part of Ordrupgaard and it’s open to the public. I’ve made it the place of the month in May because it is such a cool experience to see his home. He has built and designed everything himself.
Finn Juhl is not as well know in the broad public as the grand old men of Danish Design PH, Arne Jacobsen or Hans Wegner. But his style and forms are just as interesting and his home is a master piece of balancing colours, shapes and light. His furniture, especially his chairs, are really well know outside of Denmark as well.
To walk around in his home gave you a complete new way of experiencing his design and choices of decoration. In connection with the opening of his house Ordrupgaard has an exhibition showing in detail how he managed to combine his own furniture with colours and his choices of art. Here you can see a small online slideshow of his house.

Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.

So the new royal playhouse opened last weekend with a gala performance of (surprise) Hamlet. I think it is safe to say that everyone who's anyone in Dansih society was there. Well not really everyone, because, alas, they forgot to invite me – something is rotten indeed.

To make sure that I had something to tell you about this new and amazing playhouse I was able to get a ticket to one of the other plays. – This new architectonical wonder has three stages and I visited the smallest one where ‘Hunger’ premiered. The play is an adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel by Jon Fosse with Janus Nabil Bakrawi in the lead role.

But before I give you my view on this play I have to tell you some more about the house. The playhouse is the second new building The Royal Danish Theatre has acquired over the last year – The Opera house is of course the first one. Now that the royal theatre has such excellent playing conditions let's only hope their artistic work can live up to the standards.

The playhouse was designed by the architects Lundgaard & Tranberg and is situated beautifully by the harbour in central Copenhagen. I’m usually not a big fan of square glass buildings and I had my doubts when I saw the work in progress. But this playhouse is one of the best examples of how glass can make a building come to life, rather than leaving it with a cold, dark and polished surface.
Another cool thing about this playhouse is that it has such a cave-like feeling inside. The lights and the stone walls make you feel really at home. There is a very cosy atmosphere in the foyer which downplays the ‘royal theatre-stiffness' – a stiffness which I think is clearly present in the new Royal Opera House located just on the other side of the water. There the light is so bright, the gold so shiny and the foyer so cold that you can't relax.

During the intermission in Hamlet I snug in to the main stage of the playhouse and in there it's even more like a cave than in the foyer. It’s dark, with raw stone bricks on the walls and as a contrast the red velvet chairs remain as a kind of reference to classical royal theatre. The smallest stage where I was is not special in the same way- it's a small black box with, I expect, a movable stage construction.

The play’s the thingI went to the smallest stage with only 100 seats designed for more intimate theatre experiences. ‘Hunger’ is basically the story of a hungry young man walking the streets for days looking for food and money. It derives originally from Knut Hamsun's novel and has also been made into a very famous film version by Hening Carlsen from 1966.

I think that the uninteresting storyline is the main problem for the play because, well, there is no story – or a very very slim one. We are presented with only little dialogue and long monologues and thus the performance rests with the ability of Janus Nabil Bakrawi to hold your attention for 1 hour and 30 min without intermission. Luckily he does a really, almost ass-kicking, good job – I guess you don’t really kick ass in such a serious role. Anyway, he does his best to communicate and make us feel his hunger and despair. Your stomach turns as he desperately stuffs himself with paper and then vomit in disgust.

But the play also holds a delicate balance between tragedy and comedy when he sadly keeps refusing any money offered to him and then humiliatingly tries to sell his ragged blanket and the plastic buttons from his coat. The only time you really jump in your seat though, is when the steep stage constructions collapse under him making such a laud crash that even the sleepiest member of the audience wakes up. However, it's not only the otherwise bare set-design, created by Sidse Jørgensen, that brings action to all the words; the direction is vitally and lively done by Rolf Heim, who brings life this heavy text through constant movement and live music. Unfortunately, it does not change the fact that this play, about ‘starving’ yourself to achieve artistic insight, lacks development or progression and therefore exhausts its audience in the end.