1935, Hotel der Nederlanden in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. The Indo family band Brown’s Sugar Babies is preparing for the grand finale of a jazz competition. The ballroom is filling up, but backstage everything is going wrong. One of the singers has lost her voice. The drummer has to be replaced at the last minute. And the youngest sister of the family has been missing for days. Meanwhile, the hotel is crawling with the most suspicious characters. As the problems pile up at lightning speed, bandleader Kurt does everything he can to save his show.
Brown Sugar Baby is a new stage play by Eric de Vroedt, inspired by his grandfather’s various jazz bands and a hidden family history. Eleven actors and musicians perform this swinging and nerve-wracking production about an Indo jazz band. The story takes place during the turbulent final years of the Dutch colony, a time when Indonesian nationalism was being increasingly suppressed by the Dutch, yet was becoming impossible to ignore.