The Hours
"Beautifully empathetic (...). The Hours grabs you by the throat." - NRC ★★★★
Director Eline Arbo adapted Michael Cunningham's The Hours for the stage. The Hours is set on one day in the lives of three women, at three different times in the 20th century.
Location de Singel, Antwerp
Run time 110 minutes
Genre Theatre
Language Dutch
This performance contains strobing effects.
The Hours
The Hours takes place on one day in the lives of three women, at three different moments in the 20th century. The day in 1923 when Virginia Woolf starts work on her masterpiece Mrs Dalloway. A mundane day of Laura Brown, an American housewife in 1949, when she escapes her seemingly perfect life in the suburbs in reading Woolf's novel. The late spring day in 1998, on which Clarissa Vaughan organises a party for her poet-friend Richard who is severely ill.
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Both the book and the successful film adaptation by Stephen Daldry (with Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, among others) have become classics.
In Eline Arbo's adaptation, Cunningham's loving literary observation becomes visible on stage: she creates a world where the writer shares space with his characters. Meanwhile, the women struggle with the roles assigned to them, each seeking their own way of freedom.
Eline Arbo about The Hours
"It is an incredibly beautiful story of three women whose lives are inextricably linked. All three struggle with the roles assigned to them and seek their own way of freedom. What I love about the book is how Cunningham manages to combine existential issues with social themes through the parallel storylines. By portraying women from completely different times, questions arise about the level of emancipation today and the role patterns that lie deeply hidden in our culture. At the same time, it is an intimate portrait of three people whose desperate quest for freedom has major consequences for the people in their environment."
REVIEWS
NRC
"Beautifully empathetic (...). The Hours grabs you by the throat."
de Volkskrant
"For example, Arbo provides the existing (classical) material with an extra layer and thus has something essentially new in store for its audience. (…) Remarkable staging."
de Telegraaf
"This stage adaptation is not only oppressive and suffocating, but also beautifully crafted and as relevant as ever."
Het Parool
"The Hours by Eline Arbo and ITA leaves no one untouched."
PROGRAM BROCHURE
Read more about the production's direction, author, scenography and music in our digital brochure.
Eline Arbo is Artistic Director at ITA since September 2023. From 2022 she was already linked to ITA as Associate Artistic Director. From January 2023, Arbo was appointed Ibsen Artist in Residence, an initiative of the Philip Loubser Foundation, which gives directors with an international ambition the opportunity to develop themselves artistically.
In season 24|25, she will create Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin) and The Wall (Marlen Haushofer); re-make The End of Eddy (Édouard Louis) and The Years (Annie Ernaux), which she previously directed elsewhere; and her stagings of The Laws (Connie Palmen), Prima Facie (Suzie Miller), Penthesilea (Heinrich von Kleist) and The Hours (Michael Cunningham) will be reprised.
Credits
by Michael Cunningham
direction Eline Arbo
translation Servaas Goddijn
adaptation Eline Arbo, Peter van Kraaij, Bart Van den Eynde
dramaturgy Bart Van den Eynde
scenography Pascal Leboucq
lighting design Varja Klosse
sound design Thijs van Vuure
costumes Wojciech Dziedzic
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private producer Jeroen van Ingen en Jaap Kooijman
