Press room

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
Age of Rage

Thursday 5–Sunday 8 May 2022, Barbican Theatre
Press performance: Thursday 5 May 2022, 6.30pm

Visionary director Ivo van Hove returns with a dark, epic and visceral story adapted from ancient Greek classics that tell how revenge wrecks and haunts successive generations.

Age of Rage is based on the tragedies written by Euripides and Aeschylus: Iphigenia in Aulis, The Trojan Women, Hecuba, Agamemnon, Electra and Orestes. Focusing on the Trojan War and the Atreides family, we see how anger and violence are passed from generation to generation, like a curse. Performed by a large ensemble cast, it spotlights the inevitability and hopelessness of repeated circles of violence.

Age of Rage follows the acclaimed large-scale productions Roman Tragedies and Kings of War, by world-renowned Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, directed by Ivo van Hove. The set is spectacularly designed by Jan Versweyveld, with choreography by Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus and music from the contemporary music collective BL!NDMAN [drums].

Age of Rage is performed in Dutch with English surtitles.

Ivo van Hove has been General Director of International Theatre Amsterdam (formerly Toneelgroep Amsterdam) since 2001. He was artistic director of the Holland Festival from 1998 to 2004. His productions have toured all over the world including to the Edinburgh Festival, the Barbican, the Ruhrtriennale, Vienna Festival, Seoul, Sydney, Buenos Aires, New York and Festival d’Avignon. Van Hove’s work includes Angels in America, a staged version of Yanagihara’s A Little Life, Shakespeare’s Roman Tragedies and Kings of War, Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Schiller’s Mary Stuart and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Other credits include A View from the Bridge at the Young Vic, Network and Hedda Gabler at the National Theatre, Sophokles’ Antigone and Visconti’s Obsession at the Barbican, and productions for Schaubühne Berlin, Théâtre de l’Odéon and Comédie-Française, both in Paris. In New York he has directed A streetcar named desire and Hedda Gabler at NYTW, A View from the Bridge, The Crucible, Network and West Side Story on Broadway. With David Bowie and Enda Walsh he created Lazarus, which he also directed in London and Amsterdam. Prior to the production of Age of Rage at the Barbican, Ivo van Hove directs The Human Voice at the Harold Pinter Theatre, from 17 March – 19 April.

Opera credits include The Makropulos Case, Salome for Dutch National Opera, Boris Godunov and Don Giovanni for Paris Opéra, world premiere Brokeback Mountain for Teatro Real Madrid, Macbeth for Opéra de Lyon, La clemenza di Tito and Idomeneo for La Monnaie, Brussels, and Mazepa for Komische Oper Berlin.

Van Hove has received international accolades including two Tony Awards, two Obie’s and two Olivier Awards and awards in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. He is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, received the Flemish Culture Prize for Overall Cultural Merit (2015) and has been made a Commander of the Order of the Crown by King Filip of Belgium. In 2019 he was awarded the Dutch state art prize; the Johannes Vermeer prize.

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam produces and presents leading theatre and dance performances, from its theatre in the heart of Amsterdam, home to its own large-scale international company, and also other performing artists from the Netherlands and abroad. Together, the theatre and the company form a unique institution that presents, produces and inspires from a modern vision viewpoint.