| Van Hove's THE FOUNTAINHEAD at BAM - Waarom? | |
| Last Edit: singleticket 01:43 am EST 12/02/17 | |
| Posted by: singleticket 01:36 am EST 12/02/17 | |
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| Ivo van Hove's stage adaptation of Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD was four hours long and by the last hour I had lost the ability to concentrate. As always van Hove's staging was elegant (reclaimed wood from old growth trees for the stage, no less) but a central idea of why van Hove might have wanted to adapt and stage Ayn Rand's novel was nowhere to be found as far as I could see. I understand that the text is beloved by libertarians, captains of industry and congressmembers like Paul Ryan (Senator Rand Paul is actually named after the author) but none of that contemporary dramatic context made its way onto the stage in van Hove's production. Rather what we were shown was an apparently faithful adaptation of Rand's story featuring Harlequin Romance rape fantasies and proto-Fifty Shades of Gray eroticism and Rand's signature dialogue where characters hurl paragraph long philosophical statements at each other. Nearly all the characters do this regardless of their specific paper thin personas. And when adapted to the stage in all its detail, Rand's novel gets deeply confusing, not just the preposterous plot points but the philosophical archetypes themselves blur into each other and contradict themselves. Still, there were moments of tremendous theatrical verve and beauty and the cast was excellent. Some of the performances walk the line brilliantly between a comic awareness of Rand's dopeyness and a complete emotional commitment to it. Halina Reijn as Dominique was particularly impressive. But all the actors were impressive and I don't know how they managed to memorize so many lines with so little sense of a character's need to be in a scene beyond serving as a megaphone for Rand's ideas. Honestly, I tried to follow the philosophical conflict and I thought I did in bits and pieces in the first two hours but by the third I had given up. More evidence that van Hove has a great sense of theatrical instinct but not much of a compelling purpose behind it. | |
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