How many country singers do you need to change a bulb? Two: one to change it and one to sing a song about the demise of the old one. A popular Norwegian joke that perfectly captures the excessive sentimentality of country music. Which is why MaisonDahlBonnema very effectively introduces the sado-masochistic element. This opera, which is sung throughout, otherwise has little to do with country. It is more a metaphor for the sentimental feeling of emptiness towards which both the form and content of the whole performance are directed. Whereas Johan Heldenbergh’s country show The Broken Circle Breakdown has sentimentality in cartloads – which is undoubtedly why it has been such a success – Anneke Bonnema and Hans Petter Dahl, in the guise of their alter egos Ricky and Ronny, take a completely different direction. Ricky and Ronny’s human feelings are swallowed up entirely by their abandonment to extremes of physical pain and ecstatic pleasure. This ‘sado country opera’ is the second part of a trilogy. The first part was a pop opera where they also sang about the loss of the freedoms gained in the 60s. In part two they are accompanied by a red-hot vamp enveloped in black latex, called Hundred Stars, played by the Swedish actress Louise Peterhoff. In the beginning they sing to an ethereal soundtrack as they fly through a cloud above Paris and ultimately land in a park. The trio will in fact often return to the clouds, both in their heads and with their bodies. In the park they have some wild nights packed with sex, drugs and violence. The psychedelia takes them tumbling from one place to another, resulting in a confusion that makes indistinct leaps through space and time. It is the confusion which the characters themselves feel that also guides you agreeably through the world they are involved in. From the park they are shot up to the stars, where Ricky is swallowed by a big fish. But there appears to be more to this than psychedelia. Ricky and Ronny are adrift and have lost all sense of their centre. Ricky calls himself a machine without a soul. The laws of raw nature obscure any respect for feelings or morality. The park they camp in starts to overgrow the deserted city of Paris. Whereas in Ricky and Ronny traces of humanity are still to be found, Hundred Stars has lost it completely. She seems to be their guide through this barren landscape. According to Hans Petter Dahl, she is based on Nietzsche’s ‘amoral being’. The sado country opera shows where this sort of utter lack of restraint can lead. In Ricky and Ronny’s case it is to utter emptiness. Not just a spiritual emptiness, sings Ricky, but an actual one where everything is equal to its opposite. She has had enough of all the theories and lets herself go entirely into the black hole. At the end, like a vision, we see an animated film in which Ricky and Hundred Stars eat Ronny and then dive into a lake, until all that remains is a black screen with a few air bubbles, a distant echo of the starry sky. It is an emptiness they are able to communicate to the audience through their stage setting, choreography and, above all, music. The set is simple, with five white rostra which are reminiscent, successively, of a cloud, a bed and a gravestone. Here unfolds a choreography that depicts not much more than stylised seduction, flight and unabashed fucking. Hans Petter Dahl’s electronic soundtrack floats just above them without culminating in any climax or coming to a rest. The rhythms are monotonous and are generally accompanied by vague synthesizer strings, deep basses and repetitive guitar picking that gradually empty your mind. This emptiness leaves you with a remarkably contented restfulness. But if the spirit of Nietzsche is truly to be found in this piece, as Dahl hinted in the discussion afterwards, it cannot end with emptiness. Even though Nietzsche was the philosopher with the hammer, who smashed all accepted truths and experienced the black hole several times in his own life, he was also the philosopher who repeatedly rose again and refilled the void with a message for mankind. It is to be hoped that we shall see this in the final part of Ricky and Ronny’s trilogy.