De vrek

In Ivo Van Hove’s hands, The Miser, Molière’s classic 1668
comedy, becomes a hideous portrait of a family where all the
relationships are defined and perverted by money.

Ivo Van Hove: ‘While
rehearsing this play I discovered a wealth of theatrical forms. In
addition to the comedy I found a drama of a kingly father and son, I
discovered scenes that could have been written by Ingmar Bergman and
others by Tennessee Williams, and I discovered suicidal scenes similar
to those of Sarah Kane. And that’s how I directed the play: full of
changes of style, full of interruptions, not a single scene flows in a
smooth movement, like a piece of music that hurts, that pinches and
rubs.’

Van Hove directed The Miser at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg in
2006. His version was noted for its razor-sharp analysis of a society in
which the mechanisms of the business world seep into the most intimate
human situations. He did not offer a hilarious sketch of a fatal
character defect, but the diagnosis of a sense of life in which fear and
uncertainty are fought with money and an obsessive urge to control.

Ivo Van Hove keeps well away from performance in the tradition of Louis de Funès and presents ‘a radically individual and topical interpretation’. (NRC)