Barbican, London
While the emotional complexities remain, Ivo van Hove’s high-octane makeover featuring unrelenting pyrotechnics and riveting performances is a visual epic
The fires are being stoked even before Age of Rage has started. Flames are fanned at the back of the stage while a gauzy screen with a luminous family tree flashes the names of ancient gods and royals. Zeus. Agamemnon. Tantalus. Clytemnestra. They zoom toward us like the opening credits for an action-packed movie.
Ivo van Hove’s makeover of ancient Greek tragedy, combining stories by Euripides and Aeschylus and produced by Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, turns out to be every bit as high-octane as these initial optics suggest. Age of Rage is not without its failings; at almost four hours long it is wildly messy, with some clunky elements in the text (adapted by Koen Tachelet and Van Hove, translated from Dutch to English by Gerard Koolschijn). But it brings ancient Greek tragedy exploding into our times. The story, featuring the fall of Troy and the house of Atreus, shows how the curse of war, the addictions of anger and revenge, the trappings of power and the abnegation of blame are still with us, all these centuries on.
