Everything about this Toneelgroep Amsterdam adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1943 film noir screams must-see. It stars a burly Jude Law as drifter Gino who falls for Halina Reijn’s Hanna, the neglected and sometimes bullied wife of much older bar owner Joseph, played by the gritty Gijs Scholten van Aschat.
And it’s directed by Ivo van Hove whose cool, pared-down aesthetic (always with designer Jan Versweyveld) strips even classic plays of fusty detail. This one takes over the Barbican’s vast stage with a shadowy, cubist design full of sharp right-angles and great blank surfaces on to which video close-ups of Law and Reijn’s faces and bodies are projected.
The plot, which is taken from the sexually-charged novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, is more about possession than obsession. The lovers — once rid of Joseph — each have their own irreconcilable visions for their future.
Joseph’s stripped down truck engine is suspended menacingly above the stage and comes into its own when first Gino manfully fixes it, and then later for two fatal car journeys. Law transmits a kind of alpha-male innocence and, as Hanna, Reijn morphs from victim to manipulative perpetrator. But lacking a certain chemistry, it’s a relationship that, like that engine, generates more exhaust than steam.
