The Damned NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (66)
See it if big dramatic production with over-the-top amazing staging. Great performances. Impressive & very creative.
Don't see it if Confusing and at points unclear story. Watching the movie would have helped a lot especially with the very fast English supertitles. Read more
See it if You're a fan of Van Hove's work - Very inventive direction and staging. Dark and Heavy story w/ excellent performances.
Don't see it if See the movie first. Story can behard to follow due to Simultaneously reading supertitles, watching the screens + actors on stage.
See it if Great acting as well as directing. If you want to see a show about the deepest darkest places.
Don't see it if Nudity, very violent very dark. A very deep moving piece. It gets scattered at different points. Covers sex addiction, greed and nazis.
See it if Macbeth in Nazi Germany. Potential family heirs to a steel company vie for power and murder each other. Sensational staging & sound design.
Don't see it if Intrigue driven plot with shallow characters. Melodrama. Excessive male nudity. Graphic pedophilia. Drunken nude gay orgy.
See it if to witness van Hove's epic, genre-busting adaptation of Visconti's Nazi Germany family drama about greed, loyalty & self-preservation.
Don't see it if you aren't prepared for relentless cruelty, unsettling nakedness & the indictment of our collective complicity in the bankruptcy of morality
See it if This is long, but the story is interesting. Great acting.
Don't see it if This is not for everybody. Disturbing, Nude, violence, betrayed, power, evil, killing, WW II.
See it if you are someone who is interested in the possibilities of contemporary staging.
Don't see it if you'd like an esthetic treatment of the early 3rd Reich to also provide an ethical frame within which to contemplate the staging's beauties. Read more
See it if you want to see a brilliantly produced, horrifying story of bitterness and greed within a wealthy family, leading to their own destruction.
Don't see it if cannot sit through over two hours of violence, nudity, hatred, blood letting, greed and difficulty following who is who in the story. Messy Read more
Critic Reviews (22)
“Astonishing...Despite Mr. van Hove’s directorial relish for sweaty melodrama, which the cast delivers with gusto, flames burn cold in 'The Damned.' I mean cold enough to keep you shivering from beginning to end...The political attitudes of the characters, embodied with unnerving intensity and discipline by the cast, cover a range of viewpoints...This rich and merciless production makes it clear that they are indeed damned for all eternity."
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“Methodically terrifying...Despite the magnetic pull of that screen, the production is at its most visceral when its merciless images play out in the bodies of its actors...There’s no petty attempt at audience-shaming, no finger wagging or spurious call to action. Instead, van Hove and his undaunted ensemble simply require that we look, long and hard, without blinking. Here we are, their story tells us. Again."
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"It's a powerful, unfortunately timely tale whose impact should be momentous. Instead, the Comedie-Francaise production directed by acclaimed avant-garde director Ivo van Hove diffuses the story's emotional impact by relentlessly calling attention to its cleverness. The most obvious example of the production's self-consciousness is its extensive emphasis on video projections, a theatrical device that, even as it has vastly improved technologically, has by now become a shopworn cliche."
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"Greed, sex addiction, blackmail and craven excuses for Nazis…nope, no relevance to see here!...Neither the screenplay nor van Hove’s chic, mediated staging deepen our understanding of why Martin is so maladjusted...As usual, the design is impeccable, and you leave with images seared into memory...To me, respect and faint exasperation are perfectly sane dual responses to this polished global brand."
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“Intriguing but enervating...While it’s easy to admire the ambition of ‘The Damned’, it’s difficult to hail it a complete success. The material is enigmatic to begin with and the adaptation can be confusing...Despite all of the violence, perversity and screaming, the show’s emotional wallop is surprisingly muted. Instead of sending shivers and unsettling, the show numbs...Still, the involvement of Comédie-Française...and van Hove makes this a must for theater lovers."
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“While I have consistently found van Hove’s aesthetic to be overblown, overindulgent, pretentious and bewildering, others have praised it as visionary, freethinking and electrifying. Those who like his work (or have yet to make up their minds) can check out his latest production...Eerie background music accompanies a lot of disturbing imagery...After the first 10 minutes, one can sense the audience divide into those who love it and those who hate it...Which side will you be on?”
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"Breathtaking...The story churns forward with the brutal efficiency of an assembly line under Van Hove's unrelenting direction...The performances are crucial in selling Van Hove's most arresting moments, and this cast wholeheartedly rises to the task...Van Hove has staged a nightmare from the darkest recesses of humanity about the obscene madness that can result from so-called rational self-interest."
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"van Hove remakes ‘The Damned’ as a cunningly constructed endgame in which the ruthless pursuit of power inevitably ends in a pile of ashes...The staging is so sleek as to occasionally be confusing; if you haven't seen the film...An epic portrait of moral collapse...The uniformly excellent cast invests these dark and morally bankrupt doings with a reality that makes them impossible to dismiss. "
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