Everything has a reason

A intimate portrait of acteur Gerard Doolen.
Gerard Thoolen dreamt of a ‘home theatre’: there was cooking and friends were always welcome and could sit at the table, to eat together, to talk, to drink, to sing and to play. Director Pieter Verhoeff has invited friends, family and colleagues to a big house in Bergen aan Zee in the Netherlands, to prepare a meal, meanwhile recalling memories: Film fragments, photo’s, letters, memorable objects pass in review. Meditative and melancholic moments alternate exuberant playing, ending up in revue-like apotheoses. There’s laughter and crying, like how it should be in a theatrical ambiance, but sometimes Thoolen’s painful and obnoxious characteristics pop up as well. His futile looking for true love, his desire for a family life, his reckless behaviour, his ecstatic and depressive periods, his wandering, seeking life, in short: the tragedy of a man with great talents, who tried to avoid his fate in vain. It is a dream coming true at last; there’s playing, eating and singing, in honour of Gerard Thoolen.