Needcompany performs 'The Art of Entertainment' at the Akademietheater: a quite exceptional happening. ‘Does anyone understand what we’re doing here?’ asks Michael König after an hour. Of course! The Art of Entertainment. Needcompany plays the death of Michael König. An answer that is just about as simple as explaining the difference between uncomprehended and incomprehensible! Jan Lauwers and his team, currently ‘artists in residence’ at the Burgtheater, performed their latest mental construction for the first time at the Akademietheater. It is a grotesque, in which an actor decides to commit suicide because he is losing his memory. With the help, by means of a triple injection provided by a doctor. Live on television. The man is called Saul J. Waner; his name is an anagram of that of the multifaceted artist Jan Lauwers, who, for the benefit of his suicidal star, combines the worst of all television formats: chat shows and cookery shows: for his definitive leave-taking, a final gourmet dinner (with Japanese dancer) is also staged. And these Belgians serve it up in the way we expect of them. With delightful dance and slapstick using kitchenware; with a joke about Leopold II and Hitler in hell, whose ending we never get to hear; and with live recording shown on six screens. For those in the audience who like to think a bit, the chef is called ‘Mr. Duchamp’, after Marcel, the conceptual artist whom Lauwers venerates so much. A MAJOR FEAT … Michael König took up his role three weeks before the premiere, and he does it brilliantly. Occasionally grumbling, or obsessed with sex in his old age, or else wallowing in self-pity. Testing his organs of balance to the extreme, he even ventures to engage in Needcompany’s highly physical acting style. … In the end, this evening of theatre is like the mussels with chips that they tend to serve in Brussels. One is at first surprised, but then it turns out to be very tasty. Nice. SUMMARY Everything here is meaningful/ambiguous Concept Television as a contemporary altar for human sacrifice, the right to age with dignity, and/or the right to euthanasia; the terror of the ratings; the power of the artist to fake everything. This evening of theatre is heavily pregnant with deeper meaning. (…)