VIEWPOINTS – Visceral Nights with Ivo van Hove

By drediman
October 24, 2014
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Last night, I was left reeling by a gutsy and revealing performance of Tony Kushner’s landmark epic “Angels in America” at the Harvey Theater, an offering from BAM’s indispensable Next Wave Festival. The production, which plays its third and final performance on Saturday and is performed in Dutch with English super-titles, is being staged by the polarizing avant-garde Belgian theater director Ivo van Hove and his company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam (van Hove’s other production in the city, a stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage”, plays its final performance on Sunday at the New York Theatre Workshop).

In the past, I’ve been less resistant, and even welcoming, of van Hove’s radical revisionist takes (seemingly inspired by the emotive minimalist aesthetics of the Greek tragedies) on iconic classics of the Western theater catalogue. For example, ten years ago, when I first encountered his work via the New York Theatre Workshop’s production of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” (which featured an unforgettable fearless performance by Elizabeth Marvel in the titular role), I immediately took to the heightened emotional intensity and rawness of van Hove’s style and his utter disregard for naturalism. It is one of the handful of seminal moments of my theatergoing life, and I remember stumbling out onto the streets of the East Village not really knowing what hit me. This is the “catharsis” that the ancient Greeks might have felt when attending theater. Suffice to say, this “Hedda Gabler” instantaneously changed my view of what theater was capable of and made me a devoted van Hove enthusiast.

Over the years, I’ve continued to be stunned and, yes, frustrated by the testing relentlessness of van Hove’s emotional rollercoasters. Overall, I’ve seen nine of his productions in various venues. In addition to “Hedda Gabler” (2004), I also caught Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” (2007), Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” (2010), and Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” (2010) at the New York Theatre Workshop, his primary artistic home in New York City. I saw his emotionally exhausting take on Eugene O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra” (2009) at Chicago’s Goodman Theater as part of their stimulating O’Neill festival. The Lincoln Center Festival staged his expansive film-to-stage adaptation of “Teorema” (2010) on Governor’s Island. At BAM, I caught his “Roman Tragedies” (2012), which linked Shakespeare’s three Roman plays, “Coriolanus”, “Julius Caesar”, and “Antony and Cleopatra”, into a six-hour interactive, intermission-less marathon. On a recent trip to London, I saw his shattering staging of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” (2014) at the Young Vic.

… Which takes us back to last night’s “Angels in America”, a play I feel passionately about. Unlike van Hove’s other projects, which have a stamp of timelessness about them, “Angels” is very much about the politics and emotional climate of a particular time and place. Therefore, I felt a bit of apprehension as I took my seat in the Harvey. How was van Hove going to pull this one off, I wondered. Here, he has condensed more than seven hours of theater into a “brisk” five-hour affair (with only one intermission) merely by playing Kushner’s masterwork at breakneck speed and only minimally nip-tucking the text. I must admit that for the first 15 minutes or so, I was resistant to the production, with memories of masterful stagings of “Angels” still prominent in my mind. However, as I warmed to van Hove’s concept and the fabulous Toneelgroep Amsterdam actors, I was eventually bowled over by the vision of the play (which is devoid of practically any scenery or props) as a savage ballet of life and death, despair and hope. As a result, the specificity of the politics of Mr. Kushner’s play dissolved leaving center stage the rush and passions of human existence. Well-done, Mr. van Hove, for unlocking a side of the play I had not scene before!

Below are snippets from the Ivo van Hove productions I’ve had the privilege of experiencing over the past decade.

HEDDA GABLER (2004)