Age of Rage, Barbican Theatre

The great Ivo van Hove is spending springtime in London this year, bringing audiences not one but two hyped-up productions. A mere month after his adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice, starring Ruth Wilson, closes at the National, the artistic director sees his own company, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, onto the stage of the Barbican Theatre to perform Age of Rage, an epic adaptation of seven Greek tragedies.

Using the Trojan War and the Atreides family as a springboard into the vengeful world of the ancient Greeks, Age of Rage delves into the tales of Greek dramatists Euripides and Aeschylus, fuelling the stories with music, dance and the extreme physicality we've come to expect from van Hove’s works.

If this concept sounds familiar, you may recall the director’s sell-out, six-hour take on Shakespeare’s Roman Plays and four-hour Kings of War, both of which won over Barbican audiences despite their lengthy run-times and being performed in Dutch. Age of Rage is less of a marathon but, at 3hr 45min, is still no sprint: audiences will be buckled into their seats from 6:30pm - 10:15pm with just one interval.

Celebrated Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus is in charge of the production’s choreography and contemporary music collective BL!NDMAN has created the score. Van Hove’s regular collaborator Jan Versweyveld is behind the show's crumbling, smouldering design.