Barbican, London
The audience become eavesdroppers in Ivo van Hove's gripping and inventive restaging of the Ingmar Bergman classic
Who's afraid of Ingmar Bergman? Obviously not Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, who have devised a radical restaging of Bergman's microscopic study of a marital breakdown, originally written for Swedish television in 1973. I find the work itself overblown but, until the last 30 minutes of this superbly acted, four-hour version, I was completely gripped.
Van Hove clearly believes in the rule of three: three sets of actors play Marianne and Johan, the audience is initially divided into three groups and we move, in the first half, through three different acting areas to watch the progressive decline of their relationship. In a touch Alan Ayckbourn might envy, even as we watch the young Marianne and Johan hosting a dinner party, we catch fleeting glimpses through a window of their mature selves.
The audience become eavesdroppers in Ivo van Hove's gripping and inventive restaging of the Ingmar Bergman classic
Who's afraid of Ingmar Bergman? Obviously not Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, who have devised a radical restaging of Bergman's microscopic study of a marital breakdown, originally written for Swedish television in 1973. I find the work itself overblown but, until the last 30 minutes of this superbly acted, four-hour version, I was completely gripped.
Van Hove clearly believes in the rule of three: three sets of actors play Marianne and Johan, the audience is initially divided into three groups and we move, in the first half, through three different acting areas to watch the progressive decline of their relationship. In a touch Alan Ayckbourn might envy, even as we watch the young Marianne and Johan hosting a dinner party, we catch fleeting glimpses through a window of their mature selves.
- 11/16/2013
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
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