Ivoivo VAN HOVE — the Brave Beneluxian Director, 57, Is

167 Ivo IVO VAN HOVE — The brave Beneluxian director, 57, is constantly reshaping the world as a place both apocalyptic and electrifying. FANTASTIC MAN Who’s the most important theatre director working today? Many will point to IVO VAN HOVE. Despite or perhaps because of his uncom- promising ethos, with audiences often nigh on abused as they sit agog and thrilled in their seats, VAN HOVE’s name is guaranteed to trigger a ticket-buying panic whenever a new show is announced. The fantasti- cally charming internationalist directs names from JUDE LAW to TAVI GEVINSON in cities from Amsterdam and New York to Seoul. As the writer of this piece attests, IVO’s work is sure to provoke a profound emotional impact that will stay with the viewer forever. Unsurprising, perhaps, that DAVID BOWIE chose him to translate his parting thoughts about LAZARUS onto the stage. 2016 has been a fruitful year for IVO. Alongside two Tony Awards, he’s been awarded the title of Commander in the Order of the Crown in Belgium, the Drama League Founders Award for Excellence in Directing and honourary Text by MARK SMITH citizenship of the town of Ham, Belgium. Photography by ANTON CORBIJN 169 ivo van hove If you were feeling generous, you might say RICHARD, played by Toneelgroep Amster- equally spirited justification: “That sofa is a and there was an immediate standing ovation that Leidseplein is Amsterdam’s answer to dam stalwart HANS KESTING, telephones very famous design, too, but it was used in a at the curtain call.” London’s Leicester Square or New York’s VLADIMIR PUTIN before declaring the productions of ours, the ‘Summer Trilogy’ by His stateside success wasn’t always on Times Square, an unholy alliance of advertis- Russian president a “faggot”), the production CARLO GOLDONI that we first did in 2010, such a towering scale. IVO has a longstand- ing hoardings, Irish theme pubs, amateurish will be reprised at the Brooklyn Academy of so you see that we always try to make good ing and loyal association with the off-Broad- street performance and semi-professional Music in November. use of what remains from our past projects.” way New York Theatre Workshop, and it was pickpocketry. On the western side of the SUSANNAH CLAPP, theatre critic with It’s partly IVO’s understanding of the to this tiny black-box venue between Second melee, like a duchess at a disco, stands the the UK’s ‘Observer’ newspaper, reckons practicalities, as well as the possibilities, of Avenue and Bowery that IVO instinctively stately Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam’s origi- IVO’s dissection of the concept of political contemporary theatre that make him such a returned when DAVID BOWIE, on the rec- nal municipal theatre. leadership is unmissable. “It’s rare for a Euro- welcome guest in institutions around the ommendation of producer ROBERT FOX, It’s to the imposing balcony of this pean director to have made such a profound world. “IVO is no prima donna,” says TONI entrusted him with directing ‘Lazarus’, neo-Renaissance building that AFC Ajax, impact across the English Channel,” she tells RACKLIN, head of theatre at the Barbican BOWIE’s self-penned musical. IVO didn’t Amsterdam’s football team, repairs for a tri- me, “let alone across the Atlantic and beyond. Centre in London. “He knows both sides of know at the time that BOWIE had terminal umphant photo opportunity whenever it has But every time – whether he’s doing SHAKE- the coin and he understands what we want for cancer. BOWIE was unaware that IVO was achieved something significant. And inside, SPEARE or for that matter ARTHUR MILL- our audiences on a pragmatic level. Conse- something of super fan – as a teenager he had a wirily handsome Belgian by the name of ER – you get the impression that IVO has quently, we work together in a very straight- scrimped to journey to New York to see IVO VAN HOVE has been busy building retreated to a very quiet room and identified forward way. The emails we exchange are BOWIE in his legendary turn as the Elephant a repertory theatre company with Champions the very core of the text. This is not someone rarely more than a line long.” Man at the Booth Theatre in 1980. They League credentials. who relies on an instantly recognisable tech- IVO assumed the helm at Toneelgroep soon traded their confidences and, between Theatre writer MICHAEL COVENEY nique that can be grafted onto any old thing. Amsterdam in 2001 after a ten-year stint at breaks in rehearsals for ‘Lazarus’, BOWIE regards this company, Toneelgroep Amster- IVO appears to have a rare kind of clarity, and Het Zuidelijk Toneel in Eindhoven. The year would entertain VAN HOVE with verbatim dam, with its cosmopolitan playbook, as “the that clarity will travel.” marked a creative step-change for IVO, monologues from ‘The Elephant Man’. “The centre of European theatre” de nos jours, an whose oeuvre – after early days spent staging voice was exactly as I remembered it,” recalls organisation equivalent to Milan’s Giorgio It’s in his very quiet office near the top of the self-written work in the Belgian creative capi- IVO. “He was a true English gentleman.” Strehler company in the 1980s or the Odéon Stadsschouwburg that I first meet IVO, tal, Antwerp – had come to centre on family BOWIE’s public appearance for the opening in Paris during the 1990s. Accordingly, the whose Christian name rhymes with E-Bow dramas such as EUGENE O’NEILL’s ‘Desire night ‘Lazarus’, on 7 December 2015, would company routinely attracts big-name guest (the last bit of his surname rhymes with Under the Elms’. He describes the 9-11 terror- be his last. stars such as JULIETTE BINOCHE, who NOVA). He describes the room as his cloister. ist attacks – which he watched unfolding on assumed the title role in last year’s touring “It’s deliberately very bare, because this is TV from his former home in Antwerp – as a Today is the day of the EU referendum in the production of ‘Antigone’, and JUDE LAW, where I come to balance the artistic ambitions powerful awakening: “My work immediately UK, so the first thing IVO did after getting up who will move to Amsterdam for two weeks that I have for Toneelgroep Amsterdam with became much more political.” His abiding at 7.30 was tune in to BBC breakfast news. next summer to play the grubby-glamorous the financial potential of the institution. impression of that day, he tells me, is of the “It’s important for a theatre-maker to be aware lead in their stage adaptation of LUCHINO You’re not going to find pictures of my family dignity with which ordinary New Yorkers of what’s going on in the world because it’s VISCONTI’s 1943 film ‘Obsession’. “I’d in here.” conducted themselves. “They were crossing not l’art pour l’art anymore,” he says, gestur- heard great things about IVO VAN HOVE,” If I’d had to guess IVO’s profession from bridges on foot in total silence. You might ing to the window. “I need to be accountable says JUDE of the decision. his body language alone, I’d have said high- have expected it to be chaotic, for people to for what I do in the same way that a factory Toneelgroep Amsterdam attracts huge end shadow puppeteer or conductor (orches- be running and pushing each other out of the owner is accountable. Except that theatre is audiences. As IVO will proudly attest, more tra, not bus). His long arms shoot all over the way, but no, they were a community. That’s made by people, not machines, and as such I than 177,000 members of the public came place when he has a point to make – which is something I really admire in America.” have a responsibility – an obligation, actually through the doors last season. Many are tour- often – and his hands are in a state of perpetu- The admiration is mutual. This year, IVO – to know what’s going on in society.” ists and Amsterdam-dwelling expats who al demonstrative flux. One moment they’re won two Tony awards. He directed two differ- Fighting for space with the spectre of benefit from the English surtitles which, like being an exploding bomb, the next, they’re a ent Broadway productions of classics by Brexit on Dutch newspapers’ front pages so many profound thought bubbles, are pro- bird. “I am a very physical director and I America’s favourite playwright, ARTHUR today is the news that the man sitting oppo- jected above actors’ heads during Thursday touch actors all the time,” he tells me. “I MILLER. ‘A View from the Bridge’, a trans- site me is the most important artistic force at night performances. Dutch academic FLOOR encourage the actors to touch each other. Peo- fer from Wyndham’s Theatre in London work in the Netherlands. IVO, you see, has RUSMAN compares the wild popularity of ple tend to think in theatre that it’s only the (where I witnessed an actual fight in the just been ranked number one in the annual Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s ‘The Fountain- mouth that’s talking. Not true. For me the lan- queue for returns), used British actor MARK NRC Cultuur Top 100, the who’s who (and head’ – a timely reboot of AYN RAND’s con- guage of the body is every bit as important as STRONG’s pulsating temple to masterful what’s what) of Dutch cultural clout. Were he troversial novel – to “a BEYONCÉ concert or the language of the text.” effect, and will now cast its menacing shadow the kind for Lennonesque braggadocio (he’s a national soccer game.” It has travelled to As the increasingly famous figurehead of over Los Angeles.

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