"I drank three glasses of scotch and ginger ale before we’d even cleared Coney Island. I didn’t want to come home. It was then that I decided to write you these letters."

On a crisp winter day in New York, Willem gets the call. It’s Mum. Pauli’s died. Come back to Amsterdam.

An unforgettable homecoming to an estranged family, a lost love, unsettling sex and an unexamined life.

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.

« The scene is memory ». It is populated with a trio of faces: a mother, Amanda and her two children Laura and Tom. Amanda still pictures herself as a great southern lady. Tom provides for his family and rushes to the cinema whenever he gets the chance. Laura spends hours with her spun glass animals… Three solitudes almost behind closed doors, three frailties, three ways to dream of a different life. The plot is simple, elusive like a memory. After Arthur Miller’s A view from the bridge (2015-2016 grand prix of the Syndicat de la critique), Ivo van Hove returns to the Odéon with this founding masterpiece and offers Isabelle Huppert one of the mythical roles of the American repertoire.

Lucas Rijneveld received the prestigious International Booker Prize for the English edition of his debut De avond is ongemak. The translation rights of his widely acclaimed second novel Mijn lieve gunsteling have so far been sold to fourteen countries. Ivo van Hove is the first director to adapt this heartbreaking and at the same time terrifying novel for the stage.
A novel that the author himself thought no one would ever want to read, but which became a bestseller in a short time. A 49-year-old vet develops a forbidden love for a farmer's underage daughter during a sweltering summer.

A love that quickly becomes an obsession. A story with moving but also intense scenes in which the adult man and the 14-year-old girl grow closer and closer until the border is crossed.

In 2008, Ivo van Hove directed a radical production of Angels in America, which Tony Kushner himself hailed as his favorite version. Hans Kesting received the Louis d'Or for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in this production. Now, we are bringing the performance back, featuring several actors from the original cast, complemented by new ensemble members. Presented within a minimalist stage design and accompanied solely by David Bowie’s songs, this adaptation of Angels in America is a tribute to the human ability to adapt, change, and survive. It is a true (re)discovery of a modern classic, but above all, it remains an incredibly relevant story to this day.

America during the Reagan years. The AIDS epidemic is spreading rapidly but is met with silence from the conservative government. Two New Yorkers grapple with the news of their diagnosis in very different ways: ex-drag queen Prior and the arch-conservative lawyer Roy Cohn, who forces those around him to lie about the nature of his illness.

In the first part, Millennium Approaches, all the characters are torn away from their roots and certainties: family, partners, religion, and political ideologies no longer provide solace in the face of pervasive disease and death. In the second part, Perestroika, tentative new friendships and relationships emerge as the characters confront the painful process of change.


In a whirlwind of tragicomic scenes and entanglements, Tony Kushner demonstrates that identity cannot be reduced to religion, race, or sexuality. Instead, it is a continuous process that can only take shape through interactions with others.

Angels in America is a gripping, hilarious, and heartbreaking story about the transformative power of love, the inevitability of change, resilience in times of crisis, and a tribute to imagination—not merely as an escape from an unlivable reality, but also as a source of understanding.