King Phillip II has made theater director Ivo van Hove a Commander of the Order of the Crown, so you’d assume van Hove was a Belgian icon. But he works in the Netherlands as the head of the national theater company, and he’s best known for interpreting world classics (Shakespeare, The Crucible) and even big American movies (Network, West Side Story). Van Hove has escaped the particulars of the culture that created him and achieved acclaim on the world stage.
Years ago his contemporary Johan Simons accused van Hove of “directing noncommittal productions and thus remaining remote from the drifting society around him.” This may be the natural course of an artist who tries to escape his provincial upbringing. Van Hove grew up in a small town outside Antwerp and felt the alienation that many gay people experience, particularly those from conservative backgrounds.
His means of escape was a striking and direct aesthetic that includes onstage screens, nudity, bare sets and intense confrontations. Rumors (1981) is about a young man with schizophrenia dealing with doctors and punk teenagers, and was first staged in a deserted laundromat in Antwerp. Germs (1982) has trans performers turning into animals.
Van Hove believes he found his touch when he began taking on well-known material, and today generally eschews original work or new commissioned scripts. Paradoxically, the director has found more artistic freedom when staging work about which audiences have preconceived notions. He feels less of an obligation to be faithful to Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams than an English language interpreter would.
And maybe this explains his essential Belgianness: Van Hove grew up on an island off the coast of world culture: near it, but not completely of it. He has just the right amount of separateness to be a great cosmopolitan artist, and to afford himself the artistic confidence to cut “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story, the better to startle audiences with violent, tattooed gangbangers.
Further Reading:
David Willinger, “Van Hove’s Disease Germs,” The Drama Review, Spring 1985.
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, “Why West Side Story Abandoned its Queer Narrative,” The Atlantic, March 2020.
Rebecca Mead, “Theater Laid Bare,” The New Yorker, October 2015.