Ivo van Hove, artistic director of Tonnelgroep Amsterdam, has taken up residency at the Barbican. He follows his highly praised productions of Shakespeare’s Histories and Romans, Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler with a disappointing production based on the Luchino Visconti’s first film, Obsession, which was based on J M Cain’s 1934 American crime novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, a term synonymous with sexual duplicity. The story has been filmed many times since, most notably in 1946 with John Garfield and Lana Turner and in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Jude Law now plays the drifter who becomes obsessed with a frustrated wife (Halina Reijn) and helps her to murder her husband (Gijs Scholten van Aschat). As you would expect van Hove strips the film down to essentials and gets rid of all the Italian neo-realism which made it so distinctive in 1942. He goes all out for the theatrics and the eroticism. The stage is enormous and largely bare. The actors are liable to burst into song. The dialogue is terribly stilted and desperately needs a dramatist to work on it. I think you would be much better off watching Visconti’s film or indeed the two American films.