Instant Love
Synopsis
Instant Love reveals how vulnerable people become when they lose autonomy over their own lives.Instant Love tells the story of Grace, who is lured into the world of prostitution by the charming pimp King. He promises her a golden future, but ultimately she falls into the trap of this ruthless deceiver. Without a passport or papers, she is left without rights or protection, and revenge becomes the only thing she has left. Harald Austbø composed new music especially for this production and the octet: lyrical melodies that capsize and are engulfed by dissonance, infectious popular tunes that are slowly and abrasively undermined. Heavenly music with raw, jagged edges. Instant Love features a brand-new and highly topical text by Ko van den Bosch, directed by Ria Marks.Instant Love is the second part of a socially engaged music theatre trilogy created by music theatre company Via Berlin and Cello Octet Amsterdam.Premiered at the International Oerol theater festival in 2018,
followed by festival Over het IJ in Amsterdam
and a Dutch theater tour.
Reviews
“The highlight for us was the struggle between King and Grace as they play a single cello together. Slagmolen portrays the moment Grace realises the situation she has found herself in with beautiful complexity and an intensity that keeps building and building.”— Alles is Cultuur – Marijke Phoa
“Everything comes together in Instant Love. The music aches, hurts or seduces, forming a sublime unity with the performance.” (...) “Van den Bosch’s rich, baroque language and sharp observations do the rest.” (...) “Director Ria Marks has shaped the fusion of the different disciplines with extraordinary skill.” (...) “beautifully layered performance by Dagmar Slagmolen.”— Theaterkrant – Luuk Verpaalen
“More than enough material for a harrowing naturalistic drama. But that is not what it becomes, if only because of the eight cellists (including those playing Grace and King). Their music, written by Harald Austbø, weaves itself around the action in all kinds of forms: painful dissonances, wisps of ethereal melody, mercurial shifts, even banal references to popular schlager music that perfectly complement King’s deliberately flashy pimp persona.” (...) “Instant Love: a moving production that powerfully conveys what it must be like to see your autonomy evaporate in such desperate circumstances: prostitution, the porn industry.”
— Leeuwarder Courant – Jacob Haagsma