Cries and Whispers Onstage

Piercing chamber drama though it may be, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers would seem an unlikely candidate for the theater, so quiet, vivid, and intimate is its story of a dying woman and the sisters who fail to offer her comfort. But the Dutch theater wunderkind Ivo van Hove—whose experimental stage adaptations of John Cassavetes’ Opening Night and some of Michelangelo Antonioni’s work, including L’avventura and L’eclisse, have been stimulating audiences in Europe and the U.S. for the past couple of years—took up the challenge, and his Cries and Whispers is playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week as part of its 2011 Next Wave Festival. The production—mounted by Hove’s Dutch repertory company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam—plays through October 29. And read Gothamist’s penetrating interview with van Hove, in which he discusses his personal connection to the material, here.

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