Welcome to your weekly guide to the global theater industry. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.
I first heard about StageAround maybe a dozen years ago, back when industry gossips were whispering that Julie Taymor wanted to get a new theater built on the west side of Manhattan. It was an innovative venue designed around one wild but ultimately simple idea: An auditorium of 1,000+ seats would be erected on a massive turnable that would rotate with every scene change to reveal another slice of the show’s set, which would be built in a ring around the audience.
Nothing came of those rumors (though I learned later that Taymor did in fact meet with the venue’s inventors). Still, I always remembered the half-intriguing, half-baffling idea of a theater where the audience moves instead of the set—and the fact that the first show to be produced in a StageAround venue was the Dutch-language musical Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange), which had opened in the Netherlands in 2010 and was, remarkably, still running. When I started this newsletter a few years ago, I vowed to make the trek there to finally see both the show and its theater, located in a former airplane hangar on the campus of a defunct naval air base.
Fast forward to today, and reader: I made it to Soldaat van Oranje, and it did not disappoint.
It’s a good thing I got there when I did. Not long after I saw the show, producers announced that Soldaat would shutter in July after a run of nearly 16 years—but StageAround is sure to live on, both in official, branded replicas and in copycat venues around the world. And the musical itself is notable not only as an unusually effective showcase of StageAround’s capabilities but also as an unlikely theatrical success story that’s defied expectations at every turn.
In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight
the behind-the-scenes circumstances that led to the accidental innovation of the StageAround design,
the backstory of Soldaat van Oranje’s development, including the headline-grabbing crash of a vintage airplane,
the true, WWII-era tale that’s attracted Dutch audiences to Soldaat for more than 15 years,
the spectacle of the production itself, including onstage rain, waves, a working motorcycle, the outdoors, and an actual airplane,
the copycat venues around the world,
what’s next for StageAround in the Netherlands and beyond, and
what it’s actually like to watch a show in a seat that keeps moving.
MEET THE SOLDAAT
Soldaat van Oranje is the longest-running Dutch musical in history. Here’s what you need to know.
THE INSPIRATION:
Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema’s bestselling 1971 memoir of his experiences in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. In 1977 the book was adapted into a well-known film, also called Soldaat van Oranje.
THE PLOT:
The WWII exploits of Hazelhoff (as everyone calls him in the show) and his university friends. Over the course of the show, Hazelhoff smuggles radio transmitters from England to the Netherlands for a Dutch resistance group, bombs Germany as a Royal Air Force pilot, and eventually becomes a personal aide to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. At nearly every turn he crosses path with his friends from Leiden University, who have been divided by the choices they made as the Nazis rose to power.
THE CREATIVE TEAM:
Book: Edwin de Vries, Dutch writer-actor-director (Dokter Deen)
Music: Tom Harriman, American composer (Baywatch)
Lyrics: Pamela Phillips Oland, American songwriter of tunes for Whitney Houston and other pop acts (with Frans van Duersen adapting for the Dutch language)
Director: Theu Boermans, Dutch theatermaker who is the former artistic director of the National Theater of the Hague
THE PRODUCERS:
Fred Boot, Dutch CEO of New Productions, former communications chief at Stage Entertainment, and founder of Montecatini Talent Agency
Robin de Levita, an independent Dutch producer of theater, film, and TV who’s been a leading executive at Stage Entertainment and Dodger Theatricals
THE CAPITALIZATION:
€12 million (~$16 million, based on the average exchange rate for 2010), but “we produced it for under €10 million,” de Levita tells me
THE LOCATION:
TheaterHangaar, a former aircraft hangar on the campus of what used to be the Valkenburg Naval Air Base near Leiden, Netherlands
NUMBER OF SEATS: 1,100
TICKET PRICES (as of Feb. 2026): €43-€100 ($50-$120)
LENGTH OF RUN (at closing): 15 years, 8 months
NO. OF PERFORMANCES: ~4,000
ATTENDANCES: 3.8 million+
THE ACCIDENTAL INNOVATION
There’s not much around TheaterHangaar, the former aircraft hangar where Soldat van Oranje has been running for 15+ years. It’s smack dab in the middle of the hourlong drive between Amsterdam and The Hague, not far from the small town of Leiden.
I arrived at the theater on a crisp, sunny afternoon in November, early enough to take a stroll around the exterior before the parking lot filled up. Rounding one corner of the building I came upon a WWII-era airplane—a 1937 Dakota—parked on the concrete and looking like it might take off at any moment.
This was a little like catching a glimpse of the bride before the ceremony. That Dakota is a key element in one of Soldaat van Oranje’s staging coups.
Late in the second act, the outer wall of the theater opens to reveal the plane, which is used as a set element for a sequence in which Queen Wilhelmina, whose reign spanned WWII, sets foot on Dutch soil for the first time since she fled to England when the Nazis invaded. The actor portraying the Queen emerges from the plane, and she and the cast play the scene there on the concrete beside the theater, come rain, snow, or shine.
By the time that moment arrives in Soldaat, the audience has already seen plenty of spectacle. There’s a beach with waves lapping against real sand. There’s a dogfight in the skies over Germany, conjured using a combination of projections and physical set elements. There’s a working motorcycle that the musical’s lead actor rides in swift circles around the audience. There’s onstage rain and pyrotechnics. Many of the show’s sets have a widescreen scale that’s near-impossible to achieve in a traditional theater.
All of that is made feasible by the production’s unique stage set-up, invented for this production and its unorthodox venue and since dubbed StageAround (or sometimes SceneAround). With all the show’s locations built in a ring around a rotating seating area, the set design doesn’t require the mobility or modularity needed for musicals in more traditional theater spaces.
Instead, the audience pivots to face one segment of the ring at a time. Curved curtain walls widen or tighten on a particular playing space, hiding the adjacent sets from view. Freed from the need to move out of the way for the next location, sets can be designed and decorated with the detail, complexity, and permanence more common to film sets.
StageAround is the brainchild of Robin de Levita, a Dutch producer with a long list of stage credits on both sides of the Atlantic. He was brought on to the project by his former colleague at Stage Entertainment, Fred Boot, the producer who had optioned the rights to Roelfzema’s memoir and begun to assemble a creative team for a musical adaptation.
After Boot landed on the idea of staging the show in the former hangar—a choice that lent a site-specific, military authenticity to the WWII-era tale—its collaborators were faced with the challenges of putting up a sweeping historical story in a space that had none of the infrastructure common to theaters—particularly no overhead fly tower, which would have helped facilitate set changes.
So de Levita came up with an idea for a theater where the audience moved instead of the sets. “It was purely about trying to find a solution for the space,” he tells me. “It was not like I had a grand vision.”
The road to opening night had its bumps, most notably when the first vintage Dakota secured for the production was irreparably damaged in a crash as it was being transported to the theater from the aviation museum that had been its home. But the resulting headlines grabbed the ticketbuying public’s attention, and enthusiastic critical and audience response further powered sales momentum.
And then the musical, performed in Dutch (with English-language audio description made available only last year), just kept running. For its entire 15+ years, the production has been sustained almost entirely by Dutch natives, with little of the tourist business that lengthens the lifespans of Broadway hits.
In the wake of Soldaat’s success, producers explored the possibility of an international iteration of the show including a planned London outpost in a new StageAround venue, which was indefinitely paused when the pandemic hit.
More recently, the original production closed temporarily to incorporate updated effects, a handful of new songs, and a modernized rewrite that, among other changes, includes a scene in which Queen Wilhelmina acknowledges that she might have done more to prevent the Holocaust. Early this year came the closing announcement, precipitated by a slow decline in attendance in recent years as the show continued long after anyone thought it would.
Meanwhile, de Levita and his collaborators found there was interest in the venue design for shows beyond Soldaat van Oranje. He himself produced a play in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank drama Anne, in a similarly unorthodox theater, with an eye toward attracting both locals and city visitors. It ran for two and a half years (2014-2016). In 2017, Japanese producers opened IHI StageAround Tokyo, which was home to shows including a bespoke staging of West Side Story. That venue closed in 2024.
In the last decade, too, a handful of productions have begun to open in Europe with a theater design clearly inspired by StageAround.
“I never imagined that I was basically the first one to do it,” de Levita says of the theater layout that became StageAround. “If we had known, we would have patented everything!”
A TIMELINE VAN ORANJE
1971
Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema publishes his wartime memoir De Soldaat van Oranje. It’s a bestseller.
1977
A film adaptation directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Rutger Hauer becomes a big hit in the Netherlands.
1993
While walking through midtown Manhattan, the Dutch producer Fred Boot, then a communications exec at Stage Entertainment, got the idea for the musical when he found himself imagining a billboard for a Soldaat van Oranje musical in Times Square.
2005
Boot secures the stage rights to the story and over the next few years assembles a creative team: book writer Edwin de Vries, composer Tom Harriman, and lyricist Pamela Phillips Oland. They create a first draft and eight songs.
2007
Roelfzema passes away at 90.
2009
Producer Robin de Levita, who had been one of Boot’s colleagues at Stage Entertainment, joins the project.
Boot decides to produce the show in a converted airplane hangar on the campus of the former Valkenburg Naval Air Base in Leiden. De Levita, grappling with the staging challenges presented by the reclaimed space, comes up with the idea that would become StageAround, and works out the dimensions.
Director Theu Boermans and designer Bernhard Hammer join the team. Once the set is designed, the show’s writers develop a new version of the show tailored to the set’s capabilities.
Alex Mulder, the Dutch entrepreneur who had funded the project up until that point, seals the deal and becomes the sole funder of the entire production.
2010
August
For one of the musical’s pivotal scenes, producers secure an actual Dakota C47 airplane, built in 1944, and arrange to transport it from a museum park in Best, Netherlands, to Leiden. But the vehicle transporting the plane crashes on an overpass in transit; no one is injured, but the plane’s damaged beyond repair. The setback is counterbalanced by the press attention to the snafu, which piques consumer curiosity.September
A replacement plane is secured from an aviation museum, disassembled, and delivered to Leiden unharmed.October
Soldaat van Oranje opens with Queen Beatrix in attendance.
2017
The first official replica of StageAround, IHI StageAround Tokyo, opens in Japan, where it hosts productions including the samurai drama Seven Souls in the Skull Castle and a bespoke staging of West Side Story.
Meanwhile, the first copycat venue opens at Puy du Fou, a historical theme park in France, with the premiere of Le Dernier Panache (The Last Plume), an all-ages historical drama about a French naval officer in the late 18th century.
2020
A plan for a London iteration of Soldaat van Oranje, including a U.K. outpost of the StageAround venue, is indefinitely paused by the pandemic.
2024
April
IHI StageAround Tokyo closes.June
Soldaat van Oranje temporarily shutters to incorporate creative changes to the long-running musical.September
A revamped version of Soldaat van Oranje reopens.
The same month, a Dutch staging of a Belgian WWII musical, 40-45, opens in the Dutch town of Barneveld, playing in a venue seemingly modeled off StageAround.
2026
Soldaat van Oranje announces it will close July 12 after a run of almost 16 years.
OKAY BUT WHAT’S THE SHOW LIKE?
As an audience member, you adjust pretty quickly to feeling the house swivel between scenes. For some transitions you feel yourself revolving far and fast—at times more than 180°—while some transitions are so gradual they’re barely noticeable. It’s consistently disorienting, but in a fun way: You never have any idea what direction you’re facing or what you’ll see next.
As a spectacle, Soldaat van Oranje is among the most effectively constructed I’ve seen. Once you get used to the scale, the detail, and the realism of the indoor locations, the story hits the beach and shows off the sand, the waves, and the rain. Later still it takes off into the skies with that surprisingly nimble recreation of an airborne battle. By the time the outer wall of the theater opens to reveal the Dakota outside, I was so turned around—and the real-world, late-afternoon light was so perfect—that I genuinely believed I was looking at an indoor replica until I felt the cold air hit me in the face.
For the theatergoers who don’t speak Dutch, there’s a scene-by-scene, English-language breakdown of the plot in the program, plus headsets available with concise English summaries of what’s happening onstage. I can’t speak to the effectiveness of the Dutch-language dialogue and lyrics, but as a plot, it’s a ripping tale, packed with espionage, action sequences, and a surprisingly compelling web of interpersonal relationships that sees friends torn apart as they face conflicting loyalties, betrayals, and danger over the course of the war.
Capping it all off is a bravura sequence that finally gives audiences a peek behind the curtain.
In the story’s denouement, protagonist Erik revisits the characters and locations he’s encountered—and as he ambles from scene to scene, traversing the entire circumference of the circle, the curtain wall pulls back enough to let you see how all these sets fit together side by side. Then, for the final image, the outer wall opens again, the actor playing Erik gets on his working motorcycle, and he rides it out of the building—and, at the end of the November matinee I saw, into the light of an actual sunset.
It’s an expertly executed, enormously satisfying sequence. And for any theater industry pros in the audience, it’s also a stellar showcase for the potential of the space itself.
WHAT’S COMING AROUND FOR STAGEAROUND
Soldaat van Oranje maybe be closing, but it’s not the last the world will see of StageAround—or at least of productions taking StageAround as an inspiration. Last month, another sweeping historical musical, this one about the leader of the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule in 16th century, began performances in Delft after a rocky development process. Called Willem van Oranje, its venue and design seem to have used Soldaat van Oranje as a blueprint, and the director of Soldaat wrote the script for Willem.
For StageAround, de Levita tells me two new venues are in the works around the world. He wouldn’t say where, and so far plans to bring StageAround to the U.S., be it New York or California or Vegas, haven’t materialized due to a combination of real estate costs and building regulations.
It’s not yet clear what will happen to TheaterHangaar once Soldaat van Oranje closes. But with Willem van Oranje and 40-45, another WWII musical in a venue with a moving audience, both up and running alongside Soldaat, the Netherlands looks to be muscling in on the market for sweeping historical spectacle-musicals.
For now, though, the success of Soldaat van Oranje remains unprecedented. “For a country this size, in a theater with 1100 seats—if you play a year, that’s great,” de Levita says. “Nobody was prepared for this.”
FURTHER READING
Speaking of unlikely, long-running successes in small European towns: All aboard for a story about how Starlight Express became a surprisingly enduring German hit.
STARLIGHT EXPRESS IS A GERMAN LANDMARK NOW
How Andrew Lloyd Webber's roller skating train musical has run for 35 years—and counting—in a German town you've probably never heard of.