The Damned (Les Damnés)

by Bart Van den Eynde based on Visconti's film

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 24 June 2019

Ivo van Hove directs members of the Comédie-Française in this sobering tale of a German industrialist family's descent into collaboration with the Nazi party and their consequent degeneration and destruction. It is the first visit of the Comédie-Française to London in about twenty years; once more Ivo van Hove has chosen to re-imagine a celebrated film.

Visconti's film of 1969 was sumptuous to look at, since the von Essenbeck family was cultured and wealthy. In this adaptation, designed as usual by van Hove's partner Jan Versweyveld, the vast Barbican stage is stripped bare, the back wall and wings exposed, and a large acting space with an orange floor is devoid of props. The actors often sit visible in the wings when not 'on stage', immobile or preparing for their next scene, and the entire proceedings are filmed by two cameramen prowling round the stage, their shots screened at the back and occasionally intercut with archive images (historical scene setting, most notably the Reichstag fire, the book burnings, and the Dachau concentration camp) and an extended set piece on the 'Night of the Long Knives'. Each time a member of the family dies - usually the result of an off-stage murder - the actor is laid in a coffin and a steam whistle blasts as ashes are added to an urn. Disquietingly there are a few moments after the coffin lid has been closed in which the body is seen on the screen moving tormentedly as the main action continues.

Visually, stylistically, the two approaches to this story could hardly be more different, but each produces a powerful and disturbing effect. It was at first difficult to know whether to watch the actors or the screen at the Barbican, though my attention was drawn to the screen not least because the actors were miked (no doubt essential given the acoustic difficulty of projecting in a cavernous acting space, especially as some scenes are played very much to one side), and also because I needed to watch the surtitles as of course this production was given in French. But this was not simply a case of watching a film as it was being shot; the physical presence of the actors was also important, and their presence in front of the screen added a dreamlike inevitability to this horrible tale. It is not only a sobering political parable but also a variation of the Macbeth story as the Baroness Sophie von Essenbeck (a chilling Elsa Lepoivre) schemes on behalf of her lover Friedrich Bruckmann (Guillaume Gallienne, ambitious but somewhat queasy about his ruthlessness) at the expense of her son Martin (Christophe Montenez, decadent but ultimately consumed by overpowering hatred).

The non-realistic technique of this presentation emphasised the ritual quality of the events - unfussy preparations by the actors for their next scenes (dressing and make-up) quietly going on in the background; a stately procession towards each coffin; the pouring of the ashes at each funeral; all this juxtaposed with the narrative of events. Through all the jostling for power and influence, the sinister figure of Wolf von Aschenbach (related to the family, but with different vowels in the surname), portrayed by Éric Génovèse, works for the Party, intimidating or destroying the people he despises and corrupting the youngest generation of the family.

On the whole, the production is powerful and engrossing. The sequence depicting the massacre of the SA officers and men at the culmination of their homosexual orgy is perhaps the only false move, relying as it does on the superimposition on the screen of a score or more SA troops not actually present on stage, while Baron Konstantin von Essenbeck (Denis Podalydès) and his attaché Janeck (Sébastien Baulain) cavort in front of us but cleverly seem also to be focal participants in the larger group on the screen. The idea is good, but the drunken cameraderie goes on for too long, so that the brutal massacre, visually stunning as it is, loses some of its dramatic force. 

By contrast, the final scenes in which the now-vengeful Martin tars and feathers his mother Sophie,  then strips himself naked and pours all the accumulated ashes over himself, and finally grabs a machine gun and fires it indiscriminately at the audience, provide a startling and provocative end to an extraordinary theatrical event.