Review Roundup: What Did Critics Think of THE DAMNED?

Park Avenue Armory presents the North American premiere of two-time Tony- and Olivier Award-winning stage director Ivo van Hove's The Damned. Starring the venerated French troupe Comédie-Française-founded in 1680, it's the oldest national theater company in the world-in their first New York appearance in over a decade.

The production will permeate the Armory's historic Wade Thompson Drill Hall with a tale of moral corruption, militaristic machinations, and a satirical celebration of evil. Emblematic of van Hove's artistic aesthetic, The Damned is a theatrical staging of Luchino Visconti's eponymous 1969 screenplay.

A chilling and topical rumination on political depravity, The Damned portrays the manipulations of the von Essenbeck family during the rise of Nazi Germany. The Armory's vast industrial space will provide a powerful backdrop, and context, for this unsettling story that personifies the perils of alluring ideology and wanton greed during a time of political upheaval. Performances at the Armory began July 17, 2018, and run through July 28.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

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Ben Brantley, The New York Times: The idea of theater that scorches may not be your idea of a midsummer night's diversion in this heat-battered July. But despite Mr. van Hove's directorial relish for sweaty melodrama, which the cast delivers with gusto, flames burn cold in "The Damned." I mean cold enough to keep you shivering from beginning to end. And to know, as you leave, that what you've seen is inevitably going to filter into your dreams.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: The Damned is going to be called topical and relevant and perhaps even necessary. Flat words with a short shelf life. Words that make it seem like an unsparing examination of power - its cancerous, cowardly urge to increase itself, its inherent overwhelming violence - is more important on some days than others. Well, be that as it may. Whether we're looking at Richard III, or at certain presidents, or at Martin - the von Essenbeck heir who starts as a kind of disturbingly vapid, moral-center-less doll and becomes a perfect embodiment of Nazi indoctrination, an empty vessel filled with wanton destruction - we're looking at an aspect of humanity that, it would seem, doesn't go away: the urge to fill the void where the soul should be.

Steven Suskin, New York Stage Review: The direct-from-Paris cast is phenomenal. Standing out are Elsa Lepoivre, as the Machiavellian mother Sophie; Christophe Montenez as her beloved, sadistic son Martin; Guillaime Gallienne as Friedrich, the non-aristocratic lover she pushes to power; Clément Hervieu-Léger as cousin Günther, who survives it all; Éric Génovèse, who pulls the plot strings as the suitably named Wolf; and-until he gets bumped off, early on-Didier Sandre as the patriarch Joachim. Sandre's death scene-the less described, the better-is beyond harrowing, the more so because it is before a live audience.

David Cote, The Observer: For van Hove fans, the high-tech aesthetics, exposed flesh and bodily fluids will be familiar stuff, even if the scale and intensity is impressive. But those who are not already connoisseurs of European regietheater ("director's theater") may find it all a bit pretentious, with on-the-nose symbolic gestures (Martin smears the ashes over his body and fires a machine-gun at the audience) and deadpan delivery broken up by hysterical screaming. To me, respect and faint exasperation are perfectly sane dual responses to this polished global brand.

Matt Windman, amNY: With scenography and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld (van Hove's professional and life partner), "The Damned" is a typical van Hove production, with a large open playing space, a slow pace and no intermission. Eerie background music accompanies a lot of disturbing imagery, including a woman being tarred and feathered and live video of actors screaming from inside of closed coffins. After the first 10 minutes, one can sense the audience divide into those who love it and those who hate it.

Joe Diemianowicz, New York Daily News: Van Hove works from the Oscar-nominated screenplay to expose von Essenbeck sexual deviance, power plays and murderous machinations that reverberate far beyond the family home. It's all seen in plain sight, since there's nowhere to hide. Jan Versweyveld's design features an empty rectangular orange floor flanked by costume racks on one side and coffins on the other. A huge central LED screen keeps busy beaming close-ups faces in live projections, recorded videos, plus grim historical and archival footage.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: J.K. Rowling and the late Luchino Visconti suddenly have something in common. You need to have ingested several of the "Harry Potter" novels and movies to know what's going on in the current Broadway play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." Likewise, you need to have seen Visconti's 1969 film about Nazis to know what's going on in Ivo van Hove's "The Damned," which opened Tuesday at the Park Avenue Armory.

Photo Credit: Jan Versweyveld

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