It was our fine friend Hans Tak who persuaded us to go and see this beautiful monologue played by famous dutch actress Johanna ter Steege. Only after we had bought the tickets and to my horror I saw the title of the performance: Hiroshima Mon Amour.. aaargh!
Director Karina Kroft transformed the original movie script in a monologue and placed it in a horse riding school near Hoorn halfway our next stop Heartbreak Hotel. The horse riding sandbox was already big for the tribunes with seating for the visitors let alone for a single woman performing a monologue. The strong wind outside was flapping the roof plates which made it sometimes difficult to hear and understand the actress.
Despite all this and my bad adolescent memories: what a magnificent performance by Johanna ter Steege! During her one-hour monologue she showed a wide range of emotions: initially exciting her lover (and me) with radiant smile and twinkling eyes and later on crying as a broken woman that remembers the pain of a lost love.
Hiroshima Mon Amour tells the story of two-day love affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect, both happily married. Triggered by the intensity of their encounter she starts looking back on a unhealed and traumatic love affair she had as a young woman with a German soldier during World War II. She compares the impact of that relationship, the murder of her German lover, being punished as a collaborator and outcasted by her family, with the impact of the atomic bomb. In particular the loss of hair and the complete anonymity of the remains of some victims. She feels guilty towards her German lover because her memories of him are fading and starting to disappear.
Almost 30 years after I had read the book and I had seen the movie now I understand ;)
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