Bar Amsterdam: Jacques Brel’s music, staged by Jarmo Reha

A production with the music of Jacques Brel

There are few places that stay standing at the edge of the world.

Places where people meet, meet again and find themselves anew. It is better when wine flows in such places, music flows and tender words flow, moving the soul sharply. “Bar Amsterdam” is a place and a moment where the bright sound of Jacques Brel’s world meets the question of everything one has to live through and go through for the beauty we embrace to be born.

A light sweep. A microphone. A ferocious-looking chorus figure. “Don’t leave me”, he sings, with his soul open and his face flaming from the effort.

Jacques Brel’s aim and focus was to tell stories whose core was always built on emotions. Brel placed himself as the direct conveyor of his work, seizing people with word and song. He let his soul resonate with everything he knew and had felt. The same aim lies behind this production: to take the audience on a journey to the edges of the human soul, to touch the corners from which we are all cobbled together. But also to ask: would there be such cobbling at all if there were no opening of one artist, one person, and no outer and inner burning?

The production moves from the light, the sublime and the pleasantly touching into depths that are also unsettling, and it does not shy away from uncomfortable questions: what the reverse side is that is unavoidable, and what justification is unjustified?

The space of the production is a salon-like meeting place. The form of Brel’s songs themselves is theatrically elevated. The main thing is that wine should flow in “Bar Amsterdam”.

On stage: Jarmo Reha, Jaak Lutsoja (accordion) and Aili Nael

Author and director: Jarmo Reha

Artists: Ulvi Tiit and Allan Appelberg

Dramaturgical assistance: Laur Kaun

Song lyrics translator: Indrek Koff

Sound artist: Lauri Kaldoja

Light artist: Sasha Mirson

Premiered 13 December 2025 in the Expedition Studio at Krulli House