The author of this strangely beautiful play is actress Abke Haring performing together with Han Kerkhoffs the play FLOU. In a disquieting opening with electronic music the two actors stand absolutely still next to each other holding hands. The rectangle on the floor and the floating roof above their life represents an abstract home. During the music drops fall in an array of glass containers. The roof leaks. The couple battles out their pain in a discouraging silence. The repetitive dialogs are pure poetry. His unwillingness to speak is magnified by her voicing his thoughts which he calls nagging in the drip drop on the stage. There is a moving part when they put small glass saucers under falling drops - yet they fail doing it together. Grim. The two longer monologues of the man are very sexual in a strangely ordinary language, talking as he is about wild sex in the deep freeze compartment of the supermarket. His language here is coarse, uncaring about her feelings. Every kind of frozen or fresh produce is used in this wild fantasy of an impromptu encounter with a past flame. At the same time it is almost hilarious. Yet it is obvious the couple doesn't have a lot of sex, or anything else with each other but being stuck, powerless to go or to let go, unable to be fulfilled by each other. The whole performance is punctuated by long eloquent silences, communicating something important, they are unable to share. Towards the end the woman asks to let her grow in 'a being without words', thus seeking the ultimate intimacy of being understood and understanding without words. Words have been used before, are charged and therefore treacherous. Yet this kind of silence would also be a hell of loss, emptiness, and a disappearing self... An intriguing performance balancing, as the author qualifies it, between duet and duel.
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