Beer Tourist

Two foul-mouthed British Manchester United football fans are on a cheap drinking holiday in Eastern Europe. Through a stream of abuse, prejudice and insults they offer their own verdict on the “European project”.

Energetic, funny and thought-provoking, this show played with national stereotypes with sometimes shocking bluntness. It was usually performed in a nightclub or bar and often in conjunction with Metro Boulot Dodo’s NightScene.

Beer Tourist is based on Wunderbaum’s extensive research in Ukraine during 2008 and the text draws on the revealing interviews they had with ordinary citizens of the Black Sea. Wunderbaum is a Dutch/Flemish performing arts company of five actors and an illustrator who work without a director to create socially-engaged theatre. In English.
Duration: 50 minutes

European middle-class budget tourist

Beer Toruist is a performance about the schizophrenic European identity. Two representatives of the “European middle-class budget tourist”, thanks to the general welfare and the economic boom in the western European countries, are able to travel around the world. They choose cheap destinations in the former Eastern bloc. They insult everyone and tell the locals how they should run things. They pass judgement on the extent the future EU-members have civilised.  But the irony is that Wunderbaum based their text on comments they received from local resident about their home country during their research.

The premise of the show is deliberately preposterous and involves a kind of intercultural joke: that two Dutch men were playing two English men talking about their experience of a third country. In each SEAS venue Wunderbaum adapted the piece – bringing in the national anthems of the country, local football songs, mentioning local bars, local drinks and national stereotypes.

The energy of the two performers Walt Bart and Matjis Jansen, their drunken anarchy and on-the-edge improvisations riveted the audience’s attention.  And often the behaviour of the audience was as entertaining as the show itself! Audience reactions varied from silent disgust to angry heckling to hysterical laughter. Memorable performances included Odessa (Exit Club) and the Marine Bar in Skegness.  Another feature of the show was the rolling subtitles translating the English dialogue into the native tongue of the audience – a feature used to clever effect when in the North Sea the surtitles showed the dialogue in Russian.

Beer Tourist by Wunderbaum