Large-scale open-air theater about depraved people

Halfway through Rammsteins blares ‘Angel’ at full volume over the speakers in the Amsterdamse Bos. It is a moment of pure release: a chilling scene just depicts how members of the German SA were murdered by the SS during The Night of the Long Knives in 1934.

In this large-scale theatrical adaptation of Visconti’s La Caduta degli deis (‘The Damned’) from 1969 we see a broken family that is further affected by the rising fascism. Director Ivo van Hove made the performance in 2016 at the Comédie-Française, but is now performing a remake with his own company International Theater Amsterdam at the Amsterdam Bostheater. More than thirty actors, cameramen and musicians fill the large open-air theater near Schiphol.

Ivo van Hove likes to catch political tug-of-war in a family drama

The Damned is about moral preservation and lust for power, and presents it as two contrasting forces that pull a person, a family and a company apart. The focus is on the Von Essenbeck family, a large steel manufacturer that enters into an alliance with the new regime during the rise of National Socialism in Germany.

Typical is the long dining table full of polished silver crockery, which most of the time is one of the main pieces of decor on the stage. Van Hove likes to capture political tug-of-war in a family drama. Within the family construct, you can reduce major political forces to a human scale: devious opportunism thus takes on a face, the categorical smallness of another becomes palpable and maternal love understandably turns into ruthless hatred.

The performance begins with the murder of Joachim von Essenbeck (Hugo Koolschijn), the patriarch who decides to cooperate with a regime he openly rejects. First-line successor is grandson Martin (Majd Mardo), very troubled and systematically kept small by his manipulative mother Sophie (Marieke Heebink). Martin is not up to his task of running the factory, but also unable to see it for himself, so that he gradually becomes radical.

live video

As is often the case in the oeuvre of Van Hove and his regular scenographer Jan Versweyveld, the interaction between stage and live video plays a major role in The Damned. A large backstage screen projects live or pre-recorded footage almost continuously. Cameramen walk across the stage and zoom in on what would otherwise have been lost in the enormous width of Bostheater. Cameras are hidden in the many coffins waiting to be filled on the right of the stage, through which we see how the dead live on in fear and anger. The public is also regularly portrayed in full, as tacit witnesses, but also to link the place and time of the action to current events.

The forest is becoming more and more menacing, because enemies can come from all sides

Versweyveld opted for an open, relatively sober stage image across the full width of the stage, so that the surrounding forest edge automatically becomes part of the scenography. That forest becomes more and more menacing, as you increasingly realize that enemies can really come from all sides. In a panicked search for her son, Sophie, followed by a camera, heads into the woods, calling his name over the nearby woodland pond. Then the camera zooms in on a poster of the performance itself – a wink to the viewer but at the same time that warning: we are also talking about 2022.

big gestures

The many characters and subplots contribute to the confused and complex tangle that is a family (company), but also creates (emotional) distance. Theater, or art, is ideally suited to mirroring or identifying with the more depraved qualities of humans, but that takes time and focus. With buckets of blood and a lot of pathos, Van Hove mainly focuses on grand gestures. More than sympathizing with the characters, dissect The Damned the structures of evil.

A shrill factory whistle sounds between the acts, reminding us that the motor moment may have been a cowardly murder and the evil context the emerging National Socialism, but that the driving force of this drama is first and foremost economic self-preservation and a lust for power that has gone crazy. Ergo: it is too simplistic to attribute this portrait of depravity entirely to the nascent Nazi regime, the depravity had long been deeply rooted in these people. In the ruthless apotheosis, Rammstein’s words echo in your head: “Wir haben angst und sind allein, Gott weiss ich will kein Engel sein.”