Internationaal Theater Amsterdam will return to the Barbican as an early birthday present for me, as they bring their newest epic production Age of Rage to London. Promising spectacular set design by Jan Versweyveld, choreography from Wim Vandekeybus and music from the contemporary music collective BL!NDMAN [drums], it is just the 3 hours and 45 minutes as opposed to the 6 hours of Roman tragedies so this’ll be a comparative breeze in the park.
In Age of Rage, Ivo van Hove tells a primordial story of how revenge haunts and wrecks successive generations. This performance is in line with earlier large-scale social productions such as Roman tragedies and Kings of war. This time the history of the Trojan War and the royal Atrid family is the starting point. Ifigeneia in Aulis, Trojan Women, Hekabe, Agamemnon, Elektra and Orestes are edited into one story. Age of Rage shows the mechanisms, inevitability and hopelessness of a circle of violence in Dutch with English surtitles.
