1888: a luthier, Vedder (Gijs Scholten van Aschat), has to step aside when his home, opposite the recently completed Central Station in Amsterdam, must yield for the planned Victoria Hotel. His cousin Anijs (Jacob Derwig), pharmacist in the Northern provinces of the Netherlands, has gotten into a fix after illegal medical practices, and is looking for a way out. For himself and his wife Martha (Rifka Lodeizen), but also for a colony of poor peat cutters whom he promises a future in the United States. Committed - or is it pride? - the two of them think up a scheme from which they all will fully benefit. With tragic consequences.

Jörgen Hofmeester is desperately looking for his missing daughter Tirza and heading towards a brutal confrontation with the man who has been the undoing of his favorite child.

2022 film directed by Dana Nechushtan

After The hidden force, Ivo van Hove made a second adaptation of a novel by Couperus: The things that pass, this time a coproduction with Toneelhuis (Antwerp).

Directing The hidden force, Ivo van Hove got rid of the image that had been stuck to Couperus since the 1970s. Not a costume drama in The Hague, no tempo dulu (the good old days). But he did get straight to the core of this visionary novel: the culture of the west, irreconcilable with that of the east.



The second project is based on the majestic psychological novel Old people and the things that pass (1906). Couperus imagined an ‘appalling and dreadful tragedy’. We see how a hushed-up murder of passion in the Dutch East Indies continues to have a devastating influence on the family of the elderly Ottilie and Takma. The hushing up of their adulterous relationship and the murder of Ottilie’s husband leave deep traces in the consecutive generations, who are trapped in an unresolved past.

Lot and Elly are the youngest members of this doomed family. They hope to be able to free themselves from the stranglehold of The Hague, but arrive back home disillusioned after their honeymoon in Italy. There is no escaping this family that is damaged by horrible secrets that should never become known.

Just like in The hidden force, Couperus shows that he is far ahead of his time. He paints the portrait of a modern family that does not cohere and is literally spread out to all the corners of the world. The family members struggle with their lustfulness, their faith, dreams of material happiness and mutual jealousy. A family where almost nobody dares to give in to their deepest wishes and desires, to be who they really are.

Jude Law plays the magnetically handsome, down-at-heel Gino in a new stage adaptation of Visconti’s penetrating social drama directed by Ivo van Hove.Drifter Gino, powerful and graceful as a puma, encounters Giuseppe and his much younger, trapped wife Hanna (played by Halina Reijn) at their roadside restaurant and petrol station. He and Hanna are so irresistibly attracted to one another they begin an affair while plotting to murder her husband. But the crime does not unite them in this chilling story where passion can lead only to destruction.

Visconti’s first feature film Obsession (1943) gave rise to Italian neorealism, a cinematic movement highlighting the struggles of ordinary people in a time of upheaval. As Van Hove’s fourth Visconti production, it features a company of Dutch and British actors led by Law, whose charismatic stage and screen performances have established him as one of the foremost actors of his generation.

Obsession is one of three Toneelgroep Amsterdam productions directed here by Ivo van Hove in 2017. See After the Rehearsal/ Persona in September.



Please note that this performance contains nudity, scenes of a sexual nature, and loud gun shots. Smoking will also take place on stage.

Please be aware that the performance on Thursday 11 May will now start at 7pm and audiences must be seated no later than 6.45pm. This is due to the NT live streaming at this performance.


Approximately 1 hour 50 mins/no interval

Age guidance 16+ (contains adult themes)

Performed in English

The hidden force is an enthralling story about the misunderstandings and incomprehension between cultures, as well as between close relatives. The downfall of Otto van Oudijck makes us painfully aware of the impossibility to fully understand others.

Dutch television series

2003 film by Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen

Lehman Trilogy has caused a furore on the West End and Broadway in recent years. Directed by Guy Cassiers, ITA is presenting this unparalleled 150-year story in the Dutch language for the first time.
In the middle of the 19th century, three Jewish brothers emigrate from Bavaria to America. In the Deep South they start a small fabric shop and become wealthy in the cotton trade. Their family business develops into a dizzying financial empire that is handed down from generation to generation. In 2008 it is jointly responsible for the financial and banking crisis. This is how Lehman Brothers self-destructs.

With Lehman Trilogy, the Italian author Stefano Massini not only wrote the story of a family, but also the history of ruthless American capitalism. Slavery and industrialization, war and new technological developments: whatever happens in America and even globally, the Lehmans always know how to make good money out of it. Everything they plan to do – including getting married and having children – is tested in advance against the question: what will it yield? Gradually, the technology and impersonality of the financial system become part of the relationships within the family.

Luk Perceval stripped the book of its Amsterdam and early-1970s context. Only the very core remained: a woman who can’t commit because the realization of decay hangs around her life like a veil. A man who can’t save her because he unjustly interprets her cry for love as a rejection.

The year of cancer (Het jaar van de kreeft) is about a troublesome relationship. The performance is a sequence of absurd, tragicomic and physically exhausting scenes between two desperate people who can neither live with nor without each other. Both lovers are caught in an inescapable spiral of intimacy and detachment, pride and devotion, life and death. A story without romance, about two people who experience love as a fate and a mission.

Claus’s novel is a rollercoaster. In short chapters, he draws a portrait of two people who can neither live with nor without each other. In provocative, moving and poetic scenes, we witness the distress caused by a great passion. Claus succeeds in turning a story that would have generated a very bad novel in the hands of lesser authors into an existential drama about angst and a drive towards death. Balancing between pathos and humor, he creates two unforgettable characters in a love story that makes sense in all ages.


In a physically exhausting performance, Maria Kraakman and Gijs Scholten van Aschat play and dance the ecstasy of being in love, as well as the defensive fights after the breakup. The forced nature of the relationship echoes in the piano music, composed and performed live by Jeroen van Veen. It propels the two lovers in a danse macabre towards the conclusion, where neither of them is willing to definitively herald the end.

Director Eline Arbo adapts James Baldwin's timeless classic for the stage. A music filled performance about love, identity, and the fear of being oneself. Giovanni’s Room explores themes such as sexuality, internalized homophobia, and societal pressure, posing the question: can you ever feel at home if you’re not allowed to be yourself?
A poignant story of passion, loss, and the struggle between deep desire and societal expectations, based on Baldwin’s masterpiece.