Ivo Van Hove's Latest Dramatic Triumph
Tony Award-winning avant-garde theatre genius Ivo Van Hove brings his latest twisted creation to the Armory stage in collaboration with Comedie-Francaise, one of the oldest theatre institutions in the world. Adapted from Italian film and theatre icon Luchino Visconti's 1969 motion picture, The Damned makes its hotly anticipated North American debut, seeming an almost prescient choice by Hove with its echoes of the current resurgence of the far right and nationalists like Donald Trump.
True to Hove's signature style, the production's minimal set design is augmented by roving cameramen capturing intimate moments, which are projected on to large screens that make the stage feel like a giant modernist art installation. The desolate scene is set for a dark drama about the rise and fall of the Essenbeck family in Nazi Germany. Power struggles, intrigue, ambition, corruption, betrayal, murder and politics blend to make a heady concoction that proves one of Hove's greatest and most ambitious works yet.