Byzantium
Restaurant Byzantium is closing down. After a hundred years of excellent service, little remains but a fractured workforce: the dishwasher in the scullery is punctually late, the oven is operated by a boundary-crossing chef, and out front a brutish drunk of a waiter would sooner drink the wine himself than serve it to the guests. Everyone is chasing their own dream while the restaurant slowly goes under. A shrewd entrepreneur is itching to transform the place into a crematorium. Ovens are ovens.
Festival Nederlands Theater Festival
Genre Theatre
Duration 2 hours and 50 minutes
Language Dutch
Playful and unhinged spectacle
In this first co-production between Het Zuidelijk Toneel and Flemish company Abattoir Fermé, Stef Lernous directs a playful and mildly unhinged spectacle about the back side of the hospitality industry. Think ambition boiling over, egos burning on the bottom of the pan and nothing that stays truly fresh.
Between heaven and the bin
The spectacle unfolds in two parts, separated by a hundred years, in the past or the future; who can say? What emerges is a culinary fever dream somewhere between heaven and the bin, complete with visual excess, dark humour and a hint of grime.
3-13 september 2026
Nederlands Theater Festival
The Nederlands Theater Festival (NTF) marks the official start of the new theatre season each year. For eleven days, starting on the first Thursday in September, the festival presents a selection of the finest and most impressive productions of the past year in Amsterdam.
Credits
Direction and text: Stef Lernous, Performance: Keja Klaasje Kwestro, Julia Ghysels, Louis van der Waal, Tine van den Wyngaert, Chiel van Berkel, Kirsten Pieters, Steve Geerts, Design: Sven Van Kuijk, Photography: Sofie Knijff