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Behind the Scenes: Ivo van Hove

Ivo van Hove

BBC Radio 4 - Behind the Scenes, Ivo van Hove

Helen Lewis discovers why Ivo van Hove is the world's most in-demand theatre director.

Ivo van Hove, while he's based in Amsterdam, works all over the world. From  West Side Story in New York to the Glass Manageries in Paris, we follow his exceptional theatre making.

Ivo van Hove is an exceptional theatre maker. British audiences will know his magnificent version of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, his giant productions of Network and The Damned, inspired by the Visconti film.  

In this programme, we catch up with Ivo in New York, just before lockdown, where he was rehearsing a new Broadway production of West Side Story. We then meet him again in Paris where he's staging Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.  We speak to French superstar Isabelle Huppert who takes the major role in that production.

We hear how Ivo works with a crystalline concept for a production - fully envisaged in terms of setting and theme - and then works very quickly with actors, many of whom, in his Amsterdam emsemble, are long-time colleagues.

Ivo van Hove's productions of Death in Venice and The Glass Menagerie were due to come to London in June. So what is the world's businest director is doing in lockdown?

Presented by Helen Lewis
Produced by Susan Marling
A Just radio production for BBC Radio 4

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