Here to teach us a lesson

This kind of thing just doesn't happen in his native Holland. Amsterdam is a prime example. I'd been there that morning before meeting Muizelaar, an actor turned director, and had walked past the theatre where Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and F***ing was playing. The title was displayed on a large banner outside. Except here, there were none of your coy British asterisks protecting the passer-by from the poisonous letters of the F-word. It was printed in full. No expletive was deleted.

Muizelaar is an associate director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, with 28 full-time actors, the largest theatre company in the Netherlands, and he's about to tour Britain with a

double-bill that will appear a lot more controversial over here than it ever did over there. One play is a contemporary Dutch comedy (performed in English) called Buff, in which Muizelaar plays a theatre critic desensitised to life's real dramas. The other is a Dutch-language version of Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes, a disturbing political allegory, which Muizelaar has directed.

It's something of an embarrassment to tell him that he's kicking off his tour in a city that has just banned an exhibition of erotica. The Toneelgroep tour has been organised to help break down barriers between the predominantly visual Dutch theatre, and the typically literary British theatre, but perhaps it'll teach us more about the levels of social repression in our respective countries.

So what is it that alarms British theatre managers, yet leaves the Dutch unperturbed? Well, it's unlikely to be Ashes to Ashes, which deals with the family-friendly theme of psychological torture, so no problems there, obviously. No, what's making them restless is Buff. In Gerardjan Rijnders's tersely written black comedy, a critic returns home ranting and raving about another bad night at the

theatre. His opening words are ''Fart fart fart fart fart''. So wrapped up is he in his tirade (masturbating and ejaculating on the way) that he fails to notice his son shooting up heroin, his wife having sex with the son, and the two of them dying.

Self-abuse and full-frontal incest, it has to be said, are not the sort of things you see every night at the theatre. But it's not shock value that has earned Buff its reputation in the Netherlands. Greeted a little coolly by the critics on its debut in 1992 - perhaps because the central character is himself a critic - it was welcomed back like an old friend in subsequent theatre seasons, and has become a sell-out success through the power of word of mouth. Even the critics now say

it's one of the highlights in the company's 10-year history. Asked what Buff is really about, Muizelaar insists it is life itself.

''Who knows if it's even about critics, it's about life,'' he says on a cafe patio outside Eindhoven's monolithic Stadsschouwburg

Theatre. ''Theatre criticism is not of wide enough interest as a subject. When you only want to make theatre about theatre it's not interesting. While my character in Buff is shouting about the tragedy that's lacking in theatre, that tragedy is surrounding him. It's a double-double. I say there's a lack of tragedy on stage, and in the meantime - on stage - you see a big tragedy relating to Oedipus and the great tragic plays. Although only one character speaks, the other parts are of equal importance.''

When the Tron's artistic director Irina Brown saw the show, she predicted British audiences would either love it or hate it, and for that same reason it was imperative they had the chance to see it. It'll be a particular novelty to see it performed in the Tron, where it is being staged in the bar to a limited audience of 60, after Ashes to Ashes has been performed in the regular theatre. Muizelaar thinks British audiences could find the Pinter play an equal eye-opener, the playwright himself having been impressed by the pared-back intensity of the performances.

''I'm sure Harold Pinter is right when he says it would be impossible to do Ashes to Ashes like this in Britain,'' says Muizelaar. ''It shows another side of Dutch theatre. I don't think you'll ever have seen a performance played like this. It is the absolute minimum of what you can do on stage. Movements are very small, but mentally big. Yet the actors are more than talking heads. They are so supple in their movements. A better political play than Ashes to Ashes I can't imagine. It really pushes at the borders of what you can imagine going on between a man and a woman. The things that are said in both Buff and Ashes to Ashes are clear, but you can't get your fingers behind it - if you know the answers, you don't have to make theatre any more.'' The visit of Toneelgroep Amsterdam will provide a snapshot of a theatre culture which thrives not simply because it is well-funded, but because it

plays to audiences which have come to expect the unusual, the stimulating, and the imaginative. That's a lesson it would cost Scottish theatre-

makers nothing to learn. ''The audience grew with these directors,'' says Muizelaar of his Dutch theatre peers. ''The audience doesn't think it is extremely special. In a way they expect it. I've had talks with the people who give the Government subsidies, and even they ask when we are going to make some provocative plays. I like that. Our theatre is dangerous, and it can reach many people.''

n Ashes to Ashes (8pm) and Buff (10pm), Tron Theatre, Glasgow, June 2-6. Re-Play post-show discussion in association with The Herald, Thursday, June 4.