SMALL SOULS

About the show

For the third consecutive season, Ivo van Hove presents an adaptation of a novel by Louis Couperus. Like The hidden force and The things that pass, Small souls is a coproduction with the Ruhrtriënnale, where the play will premiere in September. All three plays will be performed in Amsterdam this season. At the premiere of The hidden force and The things that pass at the Ruhrtriënnale in Germany, the German press placed Couperus in the same league as Thomas Mann. In his directing, Van Hove stays far away from the nostalgic period drama. He interprets Couperus ‘as someone whose works hit the nerves of the 21st century’. In an extensive adaptation of The books of the small souls (1901-1903), we focus on a family that has seen better times. Various generations struggle to live together under one roof. Their large house is a haunted house, a madhouse and an infirmary all at once. All members of the family suffer in some way from trauma, disability and neurosis. They are ‘small souls’ bearing the burden of the choices they made long ago and which they are unable or unwilling to change.