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Husbands and wives

Woody Allen, Simon Stone, Toneelgroep Amsterdam

Simon Stone, master in modern adaptations of classic tragedies, takes on Woody Allen’s famous divorce comedy-drama Husbands and wives. Seeing Allen’s film classic as a modern version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the Australian director works with the actors from Toneelgroep Amsterdam to evoke a similar intensity. Stone says that Woody Allen depicts ‘the relationship as a nightmare which in the end you can only laugh about’. He created a stir with his previous Holland Festival directions of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (2013) and Seneca’s Thyestes (2014). At Toneelgroep Amsterdam he directed the award-winning Medea (2014). Once again it will be almost impossible to remain unmoved.

Simon Stone, master in modern adaptations of classic tragedies, takes on Woody Allen’s famous divorce comedy-drama Husbands and wives. Seeing Allen’s film classic as a modern version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the Australian director works with the actors from Toneelgroep Amsterdam to evoke a similar intensity. Stone says that Woody Allen depicts ‘the relationship as a nightmare which in the end you can only laugh about’. He created a stir with his previous Holland Festival directions of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (2013) and Seneca’s Thyestes (2014). At Toneelgroep Amsterdam he directed the award-winning Medea (2014). Once again it will be almost impossible to remain unmoved.

One day you look up and it’s bad. Jack and Sally are getting divorced. We don’t want to make a big thing about it, they claim. It is a mutual decision, we’re both fine. But for their friends Gabe and Judy, it is an incredible shock. Is our marriage as good as we think it is, they wonder. Jack and Sally’s decision triggers a chain of events that profoundly uproots the lives of these four people.

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dates

June 16 - June 26

information

  • Dutch

  • Duration of performance unknown

related

One day you look up and it’s bad. Jack and Sally are getting divorced. We don’t want to make a big thing about it, they claim. It is a mutual decision, we’re both fine. But for their friends Gabe and Judy, it is an incredible shock. Is our marriage as good as we think it is, they wonder. Jack and Sally’s decision triggers a chain of events that profoundly uproots the lives of these four people.

One day you look up and it’s bad. Jack and Sally are getting divorced. We don’t want to make a big thing about it, they claim. It is a mutual decision, we’re both fine. But for their friends Gabe and Judy, it is an incredible shock. Is our marriage as good as we think it is, they wonder. Jack and Sally’s decision triggers a chain of events that profoundly uproots the lives of these four people.

Simon Stone directs Husbands and wives at Toneelgroep Amsterdam, after his successful staging of Medea at the company. The world premiere of Husbands and wives will take place at the Holland Festival 2016 where it will be performed exclusively. 

 

Woody Allen wrote and directed Husbands and wives in the period just before his own relationship with Mia Farrow failed. Scenes in which the story develops are alternated by documentary scenes in which the characters are interviewed separately and look back on what happened. A fight between the urge for freedom and the need for security breaks loose. Husbands and wives confronts us with questions we all ask ourselves at some point. When is a relationship over? And how to go on? Do you cling to what you have or be open to something completely new? How well do you know yourself, your partner, your friends? Can you be lonelier in a relationship than when you are alone? At a certain point, Gabe says: Life is not a Hollywood film. It’s a foreign film. It is not a coincidence that Husbands and wives is in many ways similar to Scenes from a marriage, the big divorce story by Woody Allen’s mentor and admired example Ingmar Bergman. 

 

Simon Stoneabout Husbands and wives: ‘Woody Allen lifts the banality of modern relationships up to a Shakespearean level. Nobody is better than him when it comes to portraying the reality of romance, with all its flaws. In Husbands and wives, he adds an air of fateful breakdown. It becomes Woody Allen, but in the form of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The relationship as a nightmare, which can only be laughed at – as long as that is possible. Because in the end, you’re there in the rain without an umbrella. All the others are happy, or at least they have found a way to be unhappy in a happy way. But you are still waiting for something there, drenched, surprised, alone.’

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credits

text Woody Allen direction Simon Stone translation Rik van den Bos dramaturgy Peter Van Kraaij scenography Bob Cousins light design Bernie van Velzen music Stefan Gregory costumes An d’Huys cast Hélène Devos, Aus Greidanus jr., Marieke Heebink, Robert de Hoog, Ramsey Nasr, Halina Reijn assistant director Olivier Diepenhorst assistant dramaturgy Doke Pauwels assistant scenography Manon Veldhuis head technique & production Wolf-Götz Schwörer production management Edith den Hamer technique Joost Verlinden, Zinzi Kemper, David Logger, Peter Pieksma, Martijn Smolders head costumes Wim van Vliet costume department Farida Bouhbouh production Marleen Koens, toneelgroep Amsterdam casting advice Hans Kemna founded by Ammodo producer Familie Staal Fonds, Joachim Fleury

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