Student - November 10, 2012
Roomservice with a smile
Ten acts - from singers and bands to stand-up comics – were on offer on Thursday night in student rooms around Wageningen town centre. Resource reporter Jeroen was there to savour the atmosphere.
After this impressive performance I head off to the Heerenstraat for a performance by the popjazz band Ape Not Mice (the name refers to an old-fashioned Dutch method of teaching children to read). The exuberant, imaginative songs performed by Diede Claesen, supported by a percussionist and a keyboard player, are very different to Felix van Cleeff's introspective music. The radiant lead singer dances, establishes a rapport with the audience and soon has all of us in the kitchen of the Heerenstraat student house singing along and snapping our fingers in time.
Back to Casa Cranca for the last show of the evening. Something completely different this time: in one of the other rooms in the house, American stand-up comedian Tim Ward does his thing. He does not shy away from all the clichés about Dutch culture; his show revolves around sending up things like the doubtful quality of Dutch cuisine, and weird and wonderful Dutch idioms. They are familiar jokes but somehow or other they work surprisingly well in the intimate setting of a student room. After a hilarious performance, Tim rushes offstage to catch the last 88 bus - stand-up comedians are just like the rest of us. And that is the end of Roomservice 2012. Very satisfied, the audience leaves the last student room, no doubt - just like me -already looking forward to the next edition.