Ingmar Bergman’s critically acclaimed 1972 film Cries and Whispers, about a woman dying in the company of her helpless sisters, has been adapted into a multidisciplinary theatrical production by Ivo van Hove, the Flemmish director who enjoyed great success in New York and elsewhere with his radical re-imagining of familiar texts. His bold interpretations of plays such as Hedda Gabler, The Misanthrope, and Little Foxes have been hits in NYC, and in 2008 he staged a remarkable theatrical adaptation of John Cassavetes's wrenching film Opening Night. Van Hove is currently back at BAM with a vivid interpretation of another film, which opens tonight for a brief run of five performances as part of the Next Wave festival. Last week we met up with the director at an East Village cafe to talk about Cries and Whispers. more ›

"You gone stark out of your head?" asks Addie, the all-knowing housemaid, in the first line of Lillian Hellman's pot-boiler The Little Foxes. And for the next two hours, that question is answered in the affirmative by almost every character in the play, which concerns a backstabbing, social-climbing Alabama family and their avaricious struggle to get the money to build a cotton mill on their plantation in the year 1900. Hellman's play opened on Broadway in 1939 with the legendary Tallulah Bankhead in the lead role of Regina Giddens, the ruthless woman who refuses to be cheated out of a windfall by her equally ruthless brothers. In an engrossing new production at New York Theatre Workshop from Flemish director Ivo van Hove, Regina is portrayed by Elizabeth Marvel, whose past collaborations with van Hove have proven particularly exhilarating, such as an unforgettable production of Hedda Gabler in 2006, and his visionary staging of A Streetcar Named Desire more ›

John Cassavetes's wrenching film Opening Night, released in 1977, stars Gena Rowlands as a famous actress who becomes increasingly unhinged after seeing a young autograph hound hit by a car outside the theater where she's starring in a Broadway-bound play. Acclaimed Flemish director Ivo van Hove—whose bold interpretations of plays like Hedda Gabler and The Misanthrope have been hits in NYC—has crafted a large-scale theatrical adaptation of Cassavetes's award-winning film. more ›