History of Violence NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (30)
See it if you like brilliant and layered storytelling: timelines intercepting each other, videography, movement, live percussion
Don't see it if you don't like to see rape being depicted on stage Read more
See it if In the style of Ivo van Hove. Immersive and challenging. Generous and brave acting.
Don't see it if In German,
See it if Experimental theater highlighting social conflicts in racism/ homosexuality/education/class; superb acting, staging & use of video
Don't see it if Nudity, rape, violence and/or homosexuality are sensitive subjects for you; use of herbal cigarettes can be overpowering at times. Read more
See it if you enjoy foreign language theatre that explores violent events and the struggle to deal with the aftermath.
Don't see it if you don't like plays with violence and nudity and a non-linear structure.
See it if you're a fan of Edouard Louis, like plays about gay men, interested in recovery after a horrible trauma & in modern German theater,
Don't see it if Upset by sexual trauma, male nudity, gay issues, not a fan of supertitles or use of video in plays, only like plays in English
See it if you are interested in seeing how Edouard Louis's novel can be dramatized with intensity and intimacy. This multimedia experience was unique.
Don't see it if you are easily unset by brutal sexual assault on stage as well as moral and political ambiguity, not a very black and white world shown.
See it if Layered intersections of sex, class, family relationships, and loneliness harshly yet beautifully rendered with multimedia experience.
Don't see it if Explicit guns, rape, attempted murder are triggering. French setting in German with English supertitles is a little confusing. Read more
See it if you like complex, layered, dark, non-linear, graphic, powerful dramas ... performed in german with supertitles.
Don't see it if you don't want to read subtitles; you try to avoid upsetting stories; you've already seen your share of naked men on stage this year. Read more
Critic Reviews (7)
"Fleeing Home, but Not Homophobia: Two plays based on the autobiographical novels of Édouard Louis put the problem of violence against gay men in a larger social context."
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4/5 Stars: "Adapted from Édouard Louis's autobiographical novel, History of Violence tells a painful personal narrative, revisiting the scene of a crime and parsing the trauma it caused. As directed by the visionary German theater-maker Thomas Ostermeier, it is a brutal and bracingly intimate act of reclamation"
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"What Makes the Man: Édouard Louis’s 'History of Violence' and 'The End of Eddy'"
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"'History of Violence' is a horror story, but a contemplative one; it features one of the most disturbing acts I have ever seen onstage, out of which it teases a multiplicity of meanings. It is a difficult, demanding, and extraordinary piece of theatre."
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"Louis' work takes a tricky turn, one I suspect a safe-space-seeking American audience might struggle with. He asks us to move past the rape, fully experience the shame…and then, more or less, to forget about it. It's an unsatisfying conclusion."
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"An examination of trauma; that in any case is the most consistently insightful aspect of the adaptation…. committed performances by the four-member cast…but the production ultimately felt more like an exercise in stagecraft rather than a pointed exploration of history or violence."
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"'Dr. Ride's American Beach House' and the Secret Lives of Lesbians in the 1980s: Sally Ride's historic space journey inspires four women on a St. Louis rooftop."
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