THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Ivo van Hove's singular vision has brought to the world's stages a range of diverse work from the classics to stage adaptations of films, even a Broadway musical. One of his trademarks is to go BIG and two of his epic, immersive, productions, Roman Tragedies and Kings of War (based on Shakespeare) wowed us at the Barbican in 2009 and 2016.
He's returned with another epic, this time taking on the Greek classics - six tragedies by Euripides and one by Aeschylus, delivered in a near 4 hour show, which focus on how revenge can linger across successive generations and, like a curse, cause havoc all the way.
Jan Versweyveld's giant widescreen set uses projections and supertitles as if you're in the cinema, to help us navigate the plot. There's a live soundscape of drums and percussion created on stage by the contemporary music collection BL!NDMAN, which is sometimes thunderous but often incredibly subtle and utilising everything from distorted vocals to a blacksmiths' wheel. In addition, acclaimed choreographer Wim Vandekeybus finds a movement language here which totally supports the actors as they try to calibrate the extremes of high octane drama.
The set resembles a rock festival stage, and van Hove utilises flashing lights and smoke and even pumps the air with aromas (fair and foul) while a grungy death-metal group's screeching guitars get the audience's blood pumping. It's enveloping and mesmerising and perfect for this dark, bloody tale of anger and retribution.
The curse stems from Tantalus, who playing a game with the Gods, served his own child as a meal, thus casting a curse on his offspring. We then get the Trojan War, initially from the perspective of the Greeks, later from the humiliated Trojans. This focuses in particular on the fate of the women who, even after the destruction of their city, undergo cruel humiliations of all sorts until they too harden into perpetrators of cruelty.
It ends with the story of Elektra and Orestes, the children of Agamemnon who are banished by their mother Clytemnestra after their father's murder. The young pair embody the powerless and van Hove cleverly explores here the consequences of their growing resentment which ultimately curdles into radicalisation. He draws out how this conviction that violence has a higher purpose, and is the only way to change the world for the better, is the source of the problem here. All atrocities seek to find legitimacy from some higher mission, and this then fuels a grief which sets in motion patterns of violence and revenge, even today. One needs only to turn on the TV and witness the horrors in the Ukraine to realise how this vision isn't fanciful.
van Hove uses his regular acting ensemble, who double up on roles, and he is blessed with the most thrilling actors. Hans Kesting manages to be regal even dressed in trackies and Janni Goslinga is remarkable as the wheelchair-bound Hecuba, grief stricken at the calculated destruction of all her children, one by one. The highlight though is the stick-thin Chris Nietvelt who is utterly riveting as both Clytemnestra and Helen. Her raspy, blood curdling, screech will stay with you long after. These are monsters in many ways, but yet totally relatable. The modern dress helps us here but so too does the bluntness of the vernacular Dutch translation. There's no poetic fancy to give us distance or elevate our feelings.
This is plain and visceral and we're complicit in it. It's all blood and guts, and bodies reduced to meat, and it hits you to the core. It takes a great feat of confidence for an acting company to pull this off without it looking exploitative, but they manage it. Here, the excess bleeds into a well of human emotion which this great ensemble has managed to generate.
van Hove has found a way of simplifying these tales in a very cinematic style, which will connect with young audiences, but none of this diminishes the psychological complexity of these archetypal characters.
