Jude, the child of suffering presented by a mise-en-scène far from agitation, voyeurism, or melodrama

© Jan Versweyveld

A large empty space in the middle of the stage; the floor of the space is orange-red, near the center of the space stands a white pedestal sink. This is Jude's domain. Jude's painful past comes to life here, and all the characters who made him suffer appear here. In the present where the play takes place, Jude repeatedly leans against the foot of the sink sitting in front of it on the floor and cuts into his arms. The blood falls to the floor; its orange-red color comes from being bathed in Jude's blood over the years. The narrow long spaces around this large empty space on the stage are the places of Jude's friends; the kitchen of the house where he was adopted at a late age, the architect’s office, the painter's workshop, the doctor's office. All these spaces surround the gap in the middle, just as all of his friends surround and embrace Jude, sensing his injury and trying to avoid him from his pains. Each one of them; one as his lover by caring him, the other by building him a house in the countryside, the other by painting his portrait, his professor from the university by adopting him and leaving all his legacy to him they all are trying to heal him and erase the traces of his painful past. During his childhood, Jude was raped many times and made to work as a child prostitute. Jude's soul was injured as much as his body. And Jude believed and convinced himself that he could only deal with these mental and physical wounds by injuring himself, by inflicting wounds on his own body.  

Jude is the protagonist of Hania Yanagihara's 800-page novel A Little Life, a bestseller and Man Booker Prize nominee in 2015. The novel tells the story of Jude and his friends, set in their early 30s in New York, over a very long period of time, in the present. The novel focuses on Jude after a while, and Jude's past is told by being embedded in the present. 

Ivo van Hove, one of the most prolific and respected theater directors of our time, brought the novel to the stage with the International Theater Amsterdam (ITA), which he has been leading for 20 years, in 2018 with the adaptation of writer-dramaturg Koen Tachelet, with whom he has collaborated in many plays. Lasting more than four hours including the break, Een klein leven was staged again at the Carré Theater, one of Amsterdam's historical performing arts buildings, in the first days of October at the beginning of the 2021-22 season. One of its performances has reached the homes of theater enthusiasts all over the world, thanks to ITA's decision to continue its stream program from the stage, ITALive, which has been started last season due to the pandemic.

For me, Ivo van Hove's pieces have an irresistible appeal; his narrative immerses me in the story in the first 5-10 minutes. Maybe it's because I studied architecture, I don't know; I liken van Hove's pieces to the architecture of the famous modernist architect Mies van der Rohe. Consider the Barcelona Pavilion, one of his most iconic and well-known buildings. Spaces flow into each other. With one or two steps you take while you are in a space, you have passed into another without noticing. This flow does not always have to be kinesthetic, it is always visually present. I have a similar experience at almost any van Hove piece I watch, both at the theatre and online. The story is multi-spatial and multi-characteristic, but the narrative is not made up of compartments, on the contrary, events, situations, times and characters flow and flow into each other with a wonderful slickness.

One of the most important elements supporting the style of the narrative is scenography. Van Hove's work and life partner Jan Versweyveld has the ability to handle many places (and times) together without any boundaries, as if they were all forming a single large space, for example in this play a New York loft. Thus, the fluency in the mise-en-scene was supported. One of the most critical elements of the scenography of this particular play is the cinemascope-sized curtains positioned on both sides of the stage. Video images of streets, parks, and squares from New York, shot from eye level and recorded while moving uninterruptedly at a slow pace are projected on these curtains throughout the play. The flow of these images behind the characters at any moment of the performance played an important role in my entering the atmosphere of the story.

Van Hove, who is one of the masters in transforming the live broadcast shot by the moving cameramen on the stage into a part of the dramaturgy, aesthetics and meaning of the play, this time projected the live broadcasts from the stage not on the cinemascope screens mentioned above, instead on small monitors placed at various points on the stage so that the audience positioned on either side of the stage could watch the details but have a distance. I didn't notice these monitors because I watched the play online, but I can say that Van Hove managed to keep the audience at a distance from the pain that Jude went through and which was literally conveyed on stage.

It is impossible to faithfully adapt a novel, which includes events spanning a period of 30 years, three different cities and many places over more than 800 pages, and which focuses on the psychology of a single protagonist, Jude, while giving equal weight to four characters at its first half. And telling the story of Jude, from his childhood of torture and abuse to self-hatred and insecurity, requires such a fine balance that the mise-en-scène escapes agitation, voyeurism or/and melodrama thanks to van Hove's mastery of directing. His work is so subtle, for example: Jude stays in the same white shirt throughout the performance after a single change of clothes at the beginning, but as he repeatedly razes his arms, the red spots on the shirt increase. That shirt is a simple but very effective image that indicates that Jude's wounds still remain there, in that body and in that spirit, despite everything.

© Jan Versweyveld

The natural and unforced acting of all the actors of ITA, with whom van Hove has been working for years, also plays a big part in his success. Ramsey Nasr, who won the best actor award at the Dutch theater awards Louis d'Or for his role as Jude, Maarten Heijmans portraying Jude's lover Willem, Hans Kesting portraying his three rapists like an angel of death and Marieke Heebink as social worker create wonders with their acting. Also, it is undeniable that the uncanny melodies from Mahler to Schubert performed live by a string quartet and the compositions written by Eric Sleichim for this play are impressive in establishing its atmosphere. Therefore, with all its elements, Een klein leven is one of Ivo van Hove's masterpieces, a satisfying theatrical feast in every sense.

© Jan Versweyveld

© Jan Versweyveld

Other shows that ITA will stream live from the stage in the first half of the 2021-2022 season are; on November 7th Ibsen House written and directed by Simon Stone inspired by Ibsen plays, on November 27th Tennessee Williams’ famous play The Glass Menagerie directed by Ivo van Hove and starring the unique Isabelle Huppert in a production of the Théâtre de l'Odéon, Paris and on December 5th Gardenia directed by Alain Platel and Frank van Laecke as a production of NT Gent & Les Ballets C. de la B..

[turkish version of this article was published on unlimited]