Dutch comedians in Scotland

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 7th, 2007

This article in the Scotsman is about a group of Dutch comics performing at the Fringe, some of whom were associates of Theo Van Gogh, the movie director who was nearly decapitated by a Dutch Moroccan Muslim.

Van Gogh’s murder stunned the Netherlands and its comedy fraternity. He was a regular at Club Toomler in Amsterdam, which has fostered many of the biggest names in Dutch comedy, and a close friend of Hans Teeuwen, the leading comedian, director and actor, now in Edinburgh for the Fringe. The day before Van Gogh’s funeral, the comedy club held a remembrance ceremony.

Hans Teeuwen, Raoul Heertje, Marc Marie Huijbregts and Theo Maassen are among those performing in showcases produced by Brian Hennigan.

The Amsterdam Comedy Collective is running three or four of its team per night at the Fringe. Stand-up is relatively new in Holland, and the performers now in Edinburgh were instrumental in its birth. “The main goal is getting to see how well they do in English,” says Xander Wassenaar, of ComedyTrain, the Dutch stand-up collective based at Toomler. “Their role models are basically English or American comedians and it’s fun to see if your own comedy stands up to that. People like Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Andy Kaufman.”

The piece is also a short history of standup in the Netherlands. Many Dutch speak English and a good number of American comics have been well-received there. (We recognize Heertje’s name– he was an early reader of SHECKYmagazine.com and we seem to recall corresponding with him in 1999!)

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