I’ve often felt that something deeper was missing behind the “love is love” rhetoric... homophobia is not rooted in who we love – it's often about how we fuck.

“Reclaiming desire” at Damn Magazine by Colin KeaysbyRead the article here

As concentrated and penetrating as the gaze may be, so free is the audience's range of movement.

Rojda Karakuş at Rekto:Verso (5 October 2023)Read the essay here (in Dutch)

I become painfully aware of my former moral superiority, back when I believed I was completely unbiased. (...) Is my ostentatiously serious, supposedly 'self-aware' way of looking really open-minded?

Dagmar Teurelincx at Rekto:Verso (5 October 2023)Read the essay here (in Dutch)

Verhoeven shows the humanity and desire behind the extremes, and succeeds in being confrontational and poignant, without being overly explicit.

Simon Baetens in Etcetera (24 April 2023)Read the review here (in Dutch)

Dries Verhoeven's work is always an exercise in plural thinking (...) And if there is one thing neoliberalism won't tolerate, it is plurality: identities that cannot be catalogued, controlled and thus marketed. Watching The NarcoSexuals is watching a form of freedom that has nothing to do with individual hedonism, but everything to do with a resistance to collective self-discipline.

Evelyne Coussens in De Morgen (21 April 2023)Read the review (in Dutch)

As a spectator, you are a voyeur, witnessing this incredible orgy of horniness, intimacy and loneliness. (...) As far as we are concerned, the best theatre production of the year.

Filip Tielens in De Standaard (19 April 2023)Read the review (in Dutch)

Verhoeven masterfully translates a sexual indulgence that normally takes place behind closed doors, into the public realm and makes it relatable. Without moral judgement, but with questions about its necessity.

Marijn v/d Jagt in De Groene (28 Sept 2022)Read the review (in Dutch)

Dries Verhoeven weaves an ingenious ambiguity into his performance The NarcoSexuals. The installation confronts you, non-stop, with your own prejudices […] A ceaseless ebb and flow of beauty and melancholy.

Herien Wensink in de Volkskrant (16 May 2022)Read the review (in Dutch)

The NarcoSexuals is at the same time liberating and uncomfortable in the way it makes taboos transparent.

Sander Janssens in NRC (14 May 2022)Read the article (in Dutch)

The new installation by Dries Verhoeven looks more theatrical and dramatic than I am used to in his work. Swaying between a peepshow and the re-enactment of Grindr sex date, a wonderful game of looking inside and out arises.

Fransien van der Putt in Theaterkrant (13 May 2022)Read the review (in Dutch)

After all, we are dealing with a very refined and intelligent, perhaps even perfidious or somewhat hellish attempt, in which what we watch, this peculiar reenactment of a sex party, is neither apologeticized nor condemned.

Piotr Gruszczyński op dwutygodnik.com (August 2022)Read the review (in Polish)

Verhoeven wants to start a public conversation with The NarcoSexuals about the meaning of chemsex, sex under the influence of drugs, a phenomenon that is especially popular among gay men. But his intentions are broader: he also wants to talk about the relationship between lust and intimacy, and about the fact that where the gay movement used to want to be visible, the chemsex scene flourishes mainly in secret.

Hein Janssen (de Volkskrant) visited Dries Verhoeven in the Studio in Almere and interviewed him during the preparations for The NarcoSexuals (12 May 2022)Read the interview (in Dutch)

The NarcoSexuals is a vivisection of the underbelly of our times. We take a look beneath the smooth surface, beyond the world in which we all have to be healthy, high-performing, sensible people. It goes deeper, into that area of growing discomfort, where a drugged body searches for happiness, balancing between madness and value.

An interview by Jowi Schmitz (Trouw) during the rehearsals of The NarcoSexuals (12 May 2022)Read the interview (in Dutch)

Verhoeven saw chemsex take off during the corona pandemic. “The many restrictions had a different effect on families than on single gay men who already have a history of restrictions.” In the reconstructed social housing, there are no restrictions.

An interview by Lorianne van Gelder (Het Parool) during the creation process (10 May 2022)Read the interview (in Dutch)