The Hours
Three women. Three eras. The same struggle.
Three women. Three moments in the twentieth century. One day that changes everything. In The Hours, director Eline Arbo weaves together the lives of three women who, each in their own time, grapple with the same question: how do you live a life that truly belongs to you?
Run time 110 minutes
Genre Theatre
Language Dutch
Surtitles English, Sat 7, Thu 12, Sat 14, Thu 19 & Sat 21 Nov
Please note this performance contains strobing effects
The Hours
In 1923, Virginia Woolf begins writing the book that will become her masterpiece: Mrs Dalloway. Thirty years later, in a stifling American suburb, housewife Laura Brown is reading that same book and feels the walls of her seemingly perfect life closing in on her. Fifty years after that, in New York, Clarissa Vaughan is preparing a party for her terminally ill friend Richard, while questioning whether the life she has built is in fact the one she wanted.
Three women, three eras, connected through literature and through a longing for freedom. They struggle with the roles assigned to them — as wife, as mother, as woman. Each searching for her own escape. That pursuit comes with consequences, both for themselves and for those around them.
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Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours and its film adaptation starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep have become modern classics. In her theatrical adaptation, Eline Arbo highlights what binds the three storylines: the progress in emancipation that has both been made and not made over the past century, and the patterns of behaviour that remain deeply ingrained in our culture. Here, the personal is inseparable from the political — a recurring thread throughout her work.
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
De Telegraaf
"This theatrical adaptation is not only oppressive and suffocating, but also visually stunning and still entirely contemporary."
NRC
"Beautifully evocative (…) The Hours grips you by the throat."
de Volkskrant
"Arbo adds an extra layer to the existing (classic) material, offering her audience something truly new. And with it, the promise of a “new” main‑stage director — one with daring and brilliance."
Het Parool
"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 25|26, she will create Copenhagen Trilogy (Tove Ditlevsen) and her stagings of Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin), The Laws (Connie Palmen), Prima Facie (Suzie Miller), The Wall (Marlen Haushofer) and The End of Eddy (Édouard Louis), 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
