One of the defining moments of my theatergoing life was seeing Dutch-Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s The Misanthrope at the New York Theater Workshop, one of From the Ledge’s inaugural top ten theatrical events, back in the fall of 2007. The Misanthrope wasn’t just great theater, it was boundary-expanding, preconception-breaking theater, with its innovative use of both live and filmed video, it’s emotionally intense, no-holds-barred acting, it’s rocket-out-of-your-chair directorial devices (“did Bill Camp actually haul in New York City garbage from outside the theater and strew it all over the stage as additional props?” WOW!). So when I saw that van Hove and his theater company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, one of the pre-eminent contemporary theater ensembles in all of Europe, was going to be part of the Eugene O’Neill Festival at the Goodman Theatre, I thought I was going to have an out-of-body experience – van Hove is actually coming to my city! As Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls said in the pre-performance director’s conversation last night, he could not have imagined curating a festival of O’Neill’s works in the 21st century without having van Hove participate. The American premiere of his Rouw Siert Electra (Mourning Becomes Electra), already widely-acclaimed in Europe, finally arrived last night at the Goodman, and with all due respect to the Wooster Group, Companhia Triptal, The Hypocrites, Mr. Falls himself, whose Broadway-bound Desire Under the Elms is quite memorable and noteworthy, the unquestionable highlight for this audience member of the Festival is van Hove and Toneelgroep’s stunningly-realized, truly world-class Mourning. No, make that universe-class. Anyone who says he or she is a sophisticated and savvy theatergoer, but doesn’t go to see Mourning during its four performance run (people, it’s $25 on the Goodman website, $12.50 on hottix.com), is an imposter. And I mean that.
Ivo van Hove, considered one of the most visionary theater directors in Europe today, has been working in New York over the past decade or so, primarily with the New York Theater Workshop, and working with American actors. With his productions of O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions, A Streetcar Named Desire, Susan Sontag’s Alice in Bed, Hedda Gabler, and the revelatory Misanthrope I saw, he has already gotten quite a reputation in the New York theater community for exploding classic texts, and, depending on who’s talking, either making them fresh and contemporary (his admirers) or shredding them beyond recognition (his detractors). The first time New York saw him work with Toneelgroep, though, was last December at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the stage version of John Cassavetes’ film, Opening Night, and it was rapturously received (even sending New York Times resident grouch Ben Brantley into paroxysms of ecstasy). So, Rouw siert Electra in Chicago is only the second time that this group has performed before American audiences. We’re pretty lucky, folks, especially since we pride ourselves on having a vibrant theater scene, second only to, and at times, surpassing, New York City.
Mourning is O’Neill’s version of Aeschylus’ masterpiece of Greek tragedy, the Oresteia, set in Connecticut in the immediate post-Civil War period. Lavinia/Electra and her brother Orin/Orestes conspire against their mother, Christine/ Clytemnestra, to avenge her murder of their father Ezra/Agamemnon. This is overwrought Greek tragedy with lots of business involving murder, suicides, incest, the Electra and Oedipal complexes, which can be quite the handful (like the 1940s movie with Rosalind Russell). But van Hove blasts the dusty Doric columns away (although they’re there among the photographs that rotate through a slideshow projected on a TV monitor), and makes this play immediate, contemporary, riveting, and harrowing for a 21st century audience. I think it’s genius that the setting is composed of drab, sterile office furniture (conference table and chairs, a whiteboard, overhead projector, a rigid office couch), and the lighting is stark and clinical, because these design elements really cut through the melodrama, serving as very strong counterpoints. I love the use of video, with the actors filmed in real-time and then their close-ups projected on stage (including in split screen, when Orin and Lavinia chat using their Mac laptops); just like their use in the Misanthrope, this video technique confronts the audience, yes, in some instances, uncomfortably and inescapably, with the characters’ fiery, rollercoaster-like emotional states, making the live performance almost cinematic. I love the use of underscoring music which is always present throughout the three and a half hour production, it makes the play more stylized, yes, but also complements the highly dramatic action onstage, almost like a soothing balm that keeps the audience sane and balanced despite the trainwreck that they’re witnessing. The various astonishing directorial touches will make you think of the play for days (I’m still not sure why the actors remove their shoes at the beginning of each Act; I’m very impressed by the parallel sodomy scenes at the beginning and ending of the play where Orin almost physically and emotionally become his father; etc.)
And then there are the actors. My gosh, can this Dutch ensemble act! It is acting from the groin as well as from the heart, acting that approximates the headiness and risk-taking of skydiving with a parachute that wouldn’t open. They’re ferocious, gut-wrenching, literally naked, bestial, easily and brilliantly navigating the text, displaying softness and subtlety one moment, and feverish emotionality and rage the next. Halina Reijn gives a harrowing, complicated performance as Lavinia, almost like a ticking bomb ready to explode when competitively dealing with her mother, but tender and joyful when welcoming her father or brother. And oh so sexy in her Act III transformation! Janni Goslinga as Christine is a worthy match- warmly maternal one moment; seductive and lascivious with both her lover, Capt. Brant, and her son, Orin, the next; petty and jealous with Lavinia; utterly heartbreaking with her husband, Ezra, whom she does not love. The acclaimed Dutch actor Hans Kesting, plays both Ezra and Capt. Brant, in an interesting, dramatically important double-casting (Brant is Ezra’s half-brother and is revealed to be Lavinia’s true love at the climax, which solidifies her extreme paternal obsession), and is intense, multi-dimensional, and (hotness alert!) smoldering in both roles. Eelco Smiths as Orin is perfectly convincing as a Mama’s boy gone mad. I love the fact that he suggests layers and layers of identity confusion that O’Neill may not have been thinking about. The rest of the cast, Alwin Pulincxx as Peter, Lavinia’s beau; Karina Smulders as Hazel, his sister and Orin’s girlfriend; and Hugo Koolschijn, as Seth, the gardener, who stands in for the village people who were in O’Neill’s original text, are all equally fine and memorable, as well.
I could go on and on about this production but I think it is best seen, not read about. Check out Chris Jones’ very rare four-star Chicago Tribune review here. I am as sad as Chris that the play is only in town till Saturday night, but hopefully this is the beginning of a long, fruitful relationship between van Hove and Toneelgroep and Falls and the Goodman. I think Chicago audiences will benefit greatly from seeing more of Toneelgroep’s work such as Opening Night, and the technology-harnessing Roman Tragedies (a six hour marathon, without an intermission, of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and Julius Ceasar, in modern dress) which was a sensation in last year’s Festival d’Avignon, the oldest theater festival in the world.
Rouw Siert Electra is at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, till Saturday, February 28.
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