Regarde Bien SeaSession / Ola Mafalaani

In the seventies, Jacques Brel worked on his final album Les Marquises on the paradisiacal Hiva Oa. While he sang of the beauty and melancholy of the islands, a harrowing drama was unfolding elsewhere in French Polynesia: French nuclear tests destroyed nature and disrupted Māori communities. The iconic Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, on its way to protest against the nuclear tests on the atoll Mururoa, was blown up by the French secret service. “Regarde bien” – look closely.

In this performance, Brel's oeuvre forms a poetic gateway to this underexposed history. Chansons such as La Cathédrale, J’Arrive, Regarde bien and Les Marquises take on an ambiguous meaning in the light of destruction and transience. Hein van der Heijden interprets multiple perspectives: a French chemist who sings of his destructive experiments, Brel who faces his own finitude, and the original inhabitants who are left destitute.

Ola Mafaalani weaves personal odes, political history and activist courage into a layered, visual spectacle. Composer Reza Namavar wrote poignant music in which Tahitian sounds, including the ukulele, resonate.

The musicians of SeaSession and Hein van der Heijden wander around in the ingenious set design by Ola Mafaalani: a sea of paper, glass and water, in which magical shadow worlds emerge with the lighting design by Floriaan Ganzevoort.

With Brel's poetry, testimonies from the crew of the Rainbow Warrior and texts by the Polynesian author and activist Chantal Spitz, a history that is barely conceivable is made tangible — in music, word and image.