Ivo van Hoves staging ofA Little Lifeimmerses audience members in its main characters suffering.
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I call it the marathon into hell, says Ramsey Nasr.
Like the book, its not an easy experience.
Thats a whole bundle of bruisedness.
Intense, overwhelming sadness occurs in the same tone as great love and mediocre pho.
And thats the miracle of what she did.
Onstage, these details must give way to something more recognizably plotlike.
Otherwise, it becomes too much, and then it becomes only about that.
But you dont have all the backdrop, the little dinners they have, the little jokes they make.
What van Hove and his translator, Koen Tachelet, have preserved is the novels punishing nature.
Sometimes, van Hove notes, People go out, come back, because its too much.
My theater is really visceral, van Hove says.
The people in the audience must be horrified.
When Willem dies, your hair should stand still.
It creates a conspiracy, he says.
After each show, there are people, Heijmans says, whove had a cleansing, religious experience.
