Age of Rage – Barbican, London

Writers: Koen Tachelet and Ivo van Hove after Euripides and Aeschylus

Director: Ivo van Hove

For Ivo van Hove, the Greek tragedies are not dramatic enough. In his version of five plays by Euripides and one by Aeschylus, van Hove adds fire, mud, incense and even a death metal band. The production by Internationaal Theater Amsterdam boasts an inventive and very European aesthetic, but it can’t quite carry the running time of nearly four hours.

Its opening hour, however, is rather thrilling as Agamemnon is persuaded by the oracle to sacrifice his eldest daughter Iphigenia so that the wind will carry Greek ships swiftly to Troy and capture his brother’s wife Helen who has eloped with Paris. Watching Iphigenia (a lively Ilke Paddenburg) resist and then accept her fate is moving, as her belief that she will be recognised as a hero is a wavering one; she quickly offers herself up at the altar before she changes her mind. Her death is artfully represented, especially compared to the gore and guts of the deaths to come.

And they keep on coming. Hecuba, a fiercely tragic Janni Goslinga, loses a daughter and a grandson in quick succession. Both of these deaths are ‘played’ by Paddenburg, a smart move by van Hove to underline the endless cycle of deaths that the House of Atreus must endure. Back in Greece, a magnetic and striking Clytemnestra (a brilliant Chris Nietvelt, always about to snap in two) takes a new lover and they plot to kill her husband. Only Hecuba’s daughter, Cassandra, can see how the killings stretch out into the future.

With the first half of Age of Rage lasting two hours, van Hove is in no hurry, but with so much happening on stage, this half is never boring. With a live band and all sound affects made onstage – there is even a huge knife-grinding stone that performers turn to create rattles and sparks – there is always something to watch. Even the man who comes on to throw sand on the damp patches on the stage brings his own sense of drama. Incense drifts into the auditorium along with dry ice. It’s a full assault on the senses. At one point Allegri’s sublimely sorrowful Miserere cuts like a razor as another death is portrayed.

But after the interval, the stage is replaced by a field of mud. Perhaps this mud is meant to represent the land to which Electra has been exiled, but it becomes a distraction as she plans with her brother Orestes to kill their mother. As the cast roll around in the mud, which is made wetter by drips of water coming out of Jan Versweyveld’s scaffolding, it’s hard not to think about all the laundry that must take place between shows. Electra and Orestes’ murders are very grubby and make Iphigenia’s sacrifice honourable in comparison.

If it’s a long night for the audience, it’s a long one too for the cast and the musicians. Everyone works hard, and we hope that Achraf Koutet as Apollo has fully recovered from a deeper descent into the land of the mortals than he planned. However, the story, in Dutch and in English surtitles, is always clear, and still has much to say. Have humans changed much since these stories were written? Ivo van Hove’s production would suggest not. Perhaps we are all ‘caught up in the nets of destiny’.

Runs until 8 May 2022