NYTimes.com: Ivo van Hove is a director who loves classic plays. It’s just hard to tell sometimes. He doused Hedda Gabler in V8 juice. He parked a fully clothed Blanche DuBois in a bathtub. He staged a food fight in “The Misanthrope.” A dramaturgical provocateur, he’s not keen on keeping the story straight.
3 comments:
I really enjoy the way in which this production is put on. An audience member's first impression of a play is normally their most important impression. It's now they remember the play. And the idea that there are three different groups getting three different impression of the show is a really smart idea. One group may start watching the couple when they're old argue about something that happened in the past and then they immediately visit the past. While someone watching in chronological order will remember the scene from the past, like it happened to them in the past. And bringing the audience together at the end when all the different actors interact, is also a great idea. It allows the audience, who has made this intimate connection with the actors, see these actors interact with one another and this sort of brings the whole piece together.
This is a really cool idea. It seems like there are more and more of this type of non-standard theatre experiences popping up here and there, though unfortunately I have not had the chance to see one myself. I do wonder, however, if the movement between scenes and especially the thirty minute intermission are a little bit distracting -- if they take the viewer out of the experience at all. I could, however, also see the breaks in between as a nice way to get a chance to review and analyze what you have already seen, instead of waiting until the end to consider the entirety of the show. It's really pretty impressive how dedicated to the intimacy of the play this group is, and how far they go in order to create the best experience for its audience.
I love the idea of personalizing a home to fit a theatre. It just makes so much sense when you think about what a theatre stands for in the first place. This is one of the processes this theatre uses to shake up the traditional way of viewing theatre. Another that sticks out for me is that three different groups see the play in a different order of events, creating three very different basis to how the play is viewed. I like this so much because when you think about it, there are only so many stories that you can tell clearly. Once you find the ten best stories that theatre begins to stay around, it gets to be a bit boring. Now with this production, it allows the audience to see that same boring story from a completely different timeline and perspective, making it hopefully interesting again.
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