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. ‘The Crucible’, starring not), IVO could now legitimately claim to be Paris, Antwerp, New York and Barcelona, an arts organisation that last year alone BEN WHISHAW, SOPHIE OKONEDO, four times bigger than the Rijksmuseum, and will soon go to Seoul. received €6.2 million in public subsidy, IVO – SAOIRSE RONAN and TAVI GEVINSON, three times bigger than blockbuster painter ‘Kings of War’, IVO’s four-and-half-hour, dressed today in a crisp black slim-fit shirt features an original score by PHILIP GLASS MARLENE DUMAS and 17 times bigger Dutch-language mash-up of the SHAKE- and smart indigo jeans – is quick to distance and has been transfixing unusually youthful than the HARRY POTTER of electronic SPEARE plays ‘Henry V’, ‘Henry VI’ and himself from fancy furniture. When I settle crowds at the Walter Kerr Theater in Manhat- dance music, MARTIN GARRIX. IVO ‘Richard III’ took over the Barbican theatre in admiringly into one of a swarm of black tan. “It’s three hours of a lot of people on allows himself a moment of quiet stupefac- London last spring, and was widely held ARNE JACOBSEN Series 7 chairs, he points stage discussing religion and politics and tion at having toppled architect REM KOOL- to be one of the theatrical acmes of 2016. out that these were inherited from his prede- scapegoating each other mercilessly,” says HAAS from the coveted top spot. “He’s an IVO and DAVID BOWIE working on Complete with a spectacular war-room-cum- cessor. “And I’ve been here nearly 16 years, ‘Lazarus’, the musical sequel to the IVO. “When I attended the first preview, I icon, of course. It’s a bit awkward to have newsroom set and contemporary political so that’s good value,” he adds. My glance at 1976 film ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ was really afraid there would be empty seats been given this award because I’m Belgian, 170 references (at one point, psychotic King the white leather sofa behind me provokes an in which BOWIE originally starred. after the intermission. But everyone stayed and yet all of a sudden I’m considered to be ivo van hove Dutch.” He says he’s very happy to be consid- “There’s this idea that you have to keep your IVO spent his early childhood in the tiny (or are they bats?) are circling overhead, and ered Dutch, and in any case “everybody has a feet on the ground. I respect that, and it has its village of Kwaadmechelen in Flemish- the 2,000-seat bleachers are vibrating with an complex identity and we need to get away benefits. But at the same time, I’ve always speaking Belgium. His father was the village ominous growl that may or may not be the from this idea that purity exists. If you looked known where my feet are.” pharmacist (“an old-fashioned one, the Mistral. When a man three rows back from into my genealogy you might very well find JAN is the compact, sinewy man with kind who made the medicines himself”) me in the stadium-style seating rig stands up out that I’m Hungarian, too.” He hasn’t a bald head and designer glasses with whom and IVO’s mother worked – illegally, IVO and hollers to get his friend SAM’s attention, looked into his genealogy for the same reason I’ve just, coincidentally, shared an elevator. reckons – long hours as his assistant. The the entire audience goes silent and turns to he doesn’t often contemplate his early work. Pushing an enormous trolley of props, JAN family was well-to-do by the standards of the gawp expectantly. Four rows before me, IVO “I go forwards, not back. I’m sure the plays looked too absorbed in scenography – his village and IVO felt socially “other” until he is a picture of serenity in pale blue. I’ve staged are a kind of diary, but if you want official metier – for me to attempt conversa- was sent to boarding school at the age of 11. ‘Les Damnés’ is based on LUCHINO to get anything done you don’t sit around tion. Of their enduring creative and personal He enjoyed it so much that, on weekends, VISCONTI’s screenplay for the 1969 film reading your old diaries all day, do you?” union (IVO and JAN married at City Hall he’d “escape” back to school. “I’d drive 60 ‘The Damned’, and concerns the power strug- Certain mementos are allowed. Dominat- in 2004) IVO says simply, “Being together kilometres on a scooter just to have one gles and machinations among members of the ing one of the walls in IVO’s office is a mas- has saved us both. We have an exceptionally drink with my friends.” steel-making VON ESSENBECK family as sive, radiant photographic print from good balance.” When they convene after At home, IVO’s status as the eldest of National Socialism sweeps Germany. What ‘Children of the Sun,’ Toneelgroep Amster- work to return to their canalside home togeth- three boys afforded him first dibs on the begins as an elegant tableau of bourgeois self- dam’s critically adored 2010 take on MAXIM er, there’s little shoptalk. Sometimes one bathwater. Adored brother JEF, IVO’s partner regard soon reeks of moral putrefaction. Six GORKY’s Russian Revolution drama. Like will ask what the other had for lunch, but in teenage crime (“We smoked cigarettes coffins line the right hand side of the stage, most of the promotional shots for VAN that’s it. “He has his trajet and I have mine,” together and did all the things we were forbid- and – with chilling inevitability – they are HOVE productions, this light-saturated says IVO. den from doing”) was diagnosed with schizo- filled throughout course of the evening. All of image of an agitated cast was taken by JAN Tonight IVO and JAN will attend a drinks phrenia in the 1980s, around the same time the victims (one of them a small child) are VERSWEYVELD, IVO’s partner in both life party for the departure of actor ALWIN that IVO came out to his parents. “It was buried alive, their death throes projected mer- and theatre-making since they met at a dance PULINCKX, who joined Toneelgroep very hard for me to see my brother when he cilessly over the cinema-sized screen at the workshop in Antwerp in 1980. With three Amsterdam as an intern in 2001 and has par- became ill because at the same time I had to back of the stage. other friends, IVO and JAN set up one of the ticipated in most of its major productions. distance myself from my parents because The notorious ‘Night of the Long Knives’ city’s first grand cafés, Café Illusie, across “Rehearsing and working on a new play can they had such a hard time with my being a scene from the film is here in the form of the street from the Royal Academy of Fine be a very delicate process,” ALWIN will tell homosexual. In those days he was often a 15-minute orgy of naked wrestling on a Arts and made enough money to fund two me once the hangover has subsided. “IVO’s productions. I say that it sounds terribly great strength as a director is to treat each romantic and bohemian. “The clue is in the actor both as his equal and as an individual.” “I am a very physical director and I touch actors all the time. I encourage name then,” says IVO. “It was an act of sur- Pretty much everyone I talk to about life vival dressed up as a restaurant.” at Toneelgroep Amsterdam describes the them to touch each other too.” troupe as a family, with IVO and JAN as its Prior to the 2016 Tony Awards ceremony at friendly patresfamilias. IVO is a demanding sedated, which I hated of course, but I don’t slip-and-slide and a frenzy of video-game New York’s Beacon Theatre in June nomi- father – and often, he admits, an absent one want to be critical because I didn’t have an violence to a soundtrack of death metal. At nees were repeatedly briefed that, in the event on account of his travel schedule – but he’s alternative solution.” Eventually (and appro- the most traumatic moments of the evening of a win, there would be no time for kissing always available for a pep talk, even when it priately for a scenographer) it was JAN who (and there are plenty) the house lights go up loved ones before ascending to the JAMES has to be on Skype. “I tell my actors that we built the bridge between IVO and his father, and the cameras which have been tracking CORDEN-manned podium for their strictly are in the theatre to break records, like Olym- who died in 2007. “JAN was sitting at his the actors are turned on the audience so that timed 90-second acceptance speeches. As it pians. Sometimes you manage it, sometimes deathbed when I wasn’t there,” says IVO, we are forced to confront our silent complici- happened, the ban proved academic for IVO. you don’t. But failure should never be a “and they became best friends.” Nowadays, ty. There’s no giggling or waving. It’s like JAN had roamed out to the foyer bar in search source of shame if you’re striving to be the IVO’s brother lives in sheltered accommoda- some nightmare version of the kisscam you of water for a parched IVO when he learned, best. When you try for mediocrity, I think tion in Belgium and is doing much better in might see at an American football match. via a monitor, that IVO had won Best Direc- that’s a shame.” general. “There is a crisis now and then,” If IVO’s version of ‘A View from the tion of a Play for his tense take on MILLER’s IVO sheepishly confirms a rumour I’ve says IVO. “Social things are hard for him.” Bridge’ recalled the stealthy ensnarement of ‘A View from the Bridge’ at the Lyceum. JAN heard around Amsterdam – namely that he a boa constrictor, ‘Les Damnés’ is a roiling rushed back to the doors of the auditorium was once so keen to have a producer col- It is July in Avignon, France, the country nest of vipers. After a weird, hypnotised ova- only to find them closed. “I told an anecdote league submit to his directorial vision that he that made IVO a Knight of the Ordre des Arts tion, we file into the streets of Avignon that got a laugh,” recalls IVO of his speech, signed an email “HOWARD ROARK”, after et des Lettres in 2004 in recognition of his drained and speechless. When I wake the “but the rest was a sort of trip. So nerve- the intransigent architect protagonist of ‘The contribution to the arts. In the gothic, open- next morning, the production’s concluding wracking! One thing I do know,” he says, “is Fountainhead’. That’s not to say that IVO is a air atrium of the extraordinary 14th-century image – a silhouetted man firing machine that once you’re sitting down in that hall, you huge fan of libertarian pin-up ROARK who, Palais des Papes, it’s placement libre for the gun rounds into the audience – is the first want to hear your name called out. You want with his mania for skyscrapers and hatred of dress rehearsal of IVO’s show with the actors thing in my head. to win. It’s as simple as that.” New York likes the establishment, is arguably the DONALD of the Comédie-Française. Audience mem- When my taxi pulls up at the Hotel a winner, of course, and IVO recalls the TRUMP of literature. “I like paying my taxes bers are communicating the number of spare d’Europe, and I enter the sun-dappled court- warmth with which everyone he encountered and I like social security,” says IVO. “If I’m seats in their vicinity with hand gestures as if yard, I can scarcely believe that this tumble- that night – “drivers, waiters, passers-by. You earning and someone else can be cured as a they’re traders on the stock-market floor. fringed man, sitting there in an immaculately name it” – offered their congratulations on result, I’m fully supportive. But at the same The atmosphere before the performance – crisp, sky-blue short-sleeved shirt, is the The director and his partner JAN VERSWEYVELD at the 2016 Tony spying his Tony. “We don’t have the same cul- time I think everyone should try to create which is headlining the prestigious Festival architect of last night’s horrors. IVO, it seems, Awards, mere hours before emerging ture in Holland,” he says of his adopted their own opportunities. I’ve a strange mix of d’Avignon – is properly febrile, as if we’re takes a tan quickly, and there are tiny, precise with two gongs. nation’s Calvinist aversion to tall poppies. European and American attitudes.” 173 waiting for a controlled explosion. Swallows freckles on his skin – perhaps because he doesn’t like rehearsals to go on for more than Last night, on stage at the Palais des Papes, ivo van hove five hours per day and has been staying at a the monster ran amok. It’s quite clear that villa outside of town. “When I said to the recent events in Paris, Brussels, Orlando Comédie-Française that we had five weeks to and Istanbul have informed the staging of do this, they didn’t think it was enough,” he ‘Les Damnés’. This is a production which says. “In the end, they told me they felt like dares to ask how much we’ve really evolved they had a hell of a lot of time. It’s because since Europe’s most murderous age. “The they feel free and focused at the same time; whole time I was working on this, I was I trusted them and they learnt to trust me.” thinking of PICASSO’s painting ‘Guernica’,” IVO has been up until 3am resolving an says IVO. “A tableau full of cruelty. Not a (imperceptible) “lighting issue” with the show sparkle of hope.” and giving feedback to his actors – one of I ask whether, given all the dreadfulness whom, GUILLAUME GALLIENNE, 44, is at work in the world, IVO thinks it’s morally merrily knocking back rosé at a table across defensible to have children. “Of course it is!” the way. IVO is less ebullient. His posture is he says without hesitation. “Look at what different from what I glimpsed of him during happened with BREXIT. Seventy-five per the rehearsal last night. The shoulders are low- cent of the young people in Britain voted er. He admits to feeling all at sea: “For a direc- against it, but the older generation decided to tor, it’s a strange mixture of feelings when destroy their opportunities and degrade their your work is done and the show opens. You’re future. That’s grotesque cruelty, yes, but you up and down at the same time. Up because have to believe that the younger generation you’ve realised the dream that you had with can create a new world, one step at a time.” your team. Down because it’s going to be hard He refers to HERBERT, the character in ‘Les to move on, to leave it behind. But I know Damnés’ who is defiant even when his wife is I have to.” Next Friday he’ll board a plane to sent to Dachau by his own family, and ABI- New York to reconnect with ‘The Crucible’. GAIL WILLIAMS in ‘The Crucible’ who This morning, on returning to the villa, continues to demand her liberty. “Look,” says IVO and JAN had a heart-to-heart about IVO, “we’ve had the Ice Age and the Stone ‘Les Damnés’. “JAN said something very Age, all these vast periods of time. We are just interesting,” IVO confides. “He thinks that a particle in the history of the world. We are this work is a return to the work we did nothing – just nothing at all. But we should together as young guys, when we were 20 enjoy what we have.” years old and full of testosterone – the rough- The head of press for the festival comes to ness of it, the scale and the meaningfulness whisk IVO away for a live TV interview in of the images, the crazy music and then these French. “Oh god, I’m so tired,” he confides, very delicate moments.” before being mic’d up with seconds to spare. IVO thinks that the death, at age 69, As I pack up my things and wave goodbye, of his hero BOWIE has been instrumental I notice the tiny pastry heart that accompa- in the intensification of his output. “I feel nied IVO’s bottle of water. I leave the hotel’s that urgency now. Look, I’m 57. I’m getting courtyard and go round the corner to a cob- a little bit older and I’m aware that there is bled public square. On a placard leaning an end to things. JAN and I have both come against a small tree in the middle of the to the conclusion that we want to spend the square, someone has spray-painted LOVE IS time we have left making theatre that’s OUR RESISTANCE in capital letters. Under meaningful.” normal circumstances, I can’t say this kind of A seminal text for IVO, recommended to thing would provoke much of a reaction in me. me during our previous meeting, is ‘Les Iden- Maybe I’d snap it for Instagram and go about tités Meurtrières’, a slim but concentrated my business. Today, I sit down on the ground essay published by Lebanese-born French and weep. I’m quite sure I know why. writer AMIN MAALOUF in 1998. In it, MAALOUF considers the problematic allure of patriotism and cannily predicts tumult in the European Union. Pondering the question of why so many nowadays commit crimes in the name of religious, ethnic or national identity, MAALOUF has the following to say: “There is a Mr. HYDE inside each of us. Clearly a firm believer in the old adage that good things come in What we have to do is prevent the conditions threes, IVO is perched on a stack of occurring that will bring the monster forth.” chairs in his Amsterdam living room “I’m glad you read it,” says IVO. “I wish in front of a painting by the Dutch DONALD TRUMP would do the same.” artist MARTIJN HENDRIKS. 175