Needcompany tries to make friends with life in 'Images of Affection' When is a liar lying? It's difficult to catch Dick Crane at it in Images of Affection. From the moment he comes in stage, the actor tries to win over the audience, but he constantly undermines his own credibility by calling himself a liar. Does that mean that his story about an attack in which he lost his loved ones is a fabrication? It could be a true story after all. Or is it rather the separate scenes that are doubtful, in which he jumps, like a head with two faces, from thesis to antithesis? Only five minutes into this new production of Needcompany, and you already find yourself on thin ice. And yet, the fact that the light is still on suggests a great deal of complicity between the people present, the performers address the audience in a friendly tone, and you are entertained from time to time by popular songs. Director Jan Lauwers plays a perfidious game of first seducing you and then slamming the door in your face. By creating an atmosphere of bonhomie, but never releasing you from a smouldering sense of unease. This production expresses a chastened view on mankind. Cheerful spirits don't seem to mind that any budding sense of well-being is promptly crushed. In the same way, performers keep rebuilding towers in the wings, as soon as the previous one has collapsed. The myth of Sisyphus could be a key, but instead of a trial, what we see here is more like a reconciliation with earthly existence. The extremes of that existence are the framework in which Lauwers has placed this production. The opening scene is that of a man and a woman locked in an ardent embrace. Love, yes, the beginning of life, but in Western culture, also the beginning of sin. Even the smallest seed contains two opposing halves. In the closing scene, the eleven performers take off their rabbit-eared jesters' helmets and place them in a row before the audience. Ultimate resignation. No more battle, no more movement. Light-footed and with a mildness that Needcompany has never displayed before in its fifteen years, this production would seem to mark the start of a new course for the group, for the years to come. Formerly, Lauwers made a name for himself as the absolute aesthete or the radical until ruin. His most recent productions were mostly performed in darkness and ended in cataclysm. But with today's light and glow, a glimmer of hope has crept into his work, even though it is always warded off by those who are too sceptical to admit it. The situation is hopeless but not serious. Using a skilful mixture of music, dance and text, the makers have succeeded in bringing variation to the rhythm, force and perspective of the production. The audience also gets a few extras in the form of quotes from earlier work, such as the recital of dates and wars, the building of ingenious towers, Grace Elle Barkey in an oriental dance, and the references to 'my dead wife'. Even the use of the music, some of the softer hits of The Kinks mixed with disharmonic sound effects, contain a reference to what The Residents made of King Lear. Images of Affection is an attempt to make friends with life. Even though life kicks sometimes. It's happy, it's vicious, and you never know how things will turn out.