AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ The Great Tamer Dimitris Papaioannou Holland Festival | Amsterdam An astronaut bounding across a moonscape, a disembodied leg crawling out of a hole, a hundred arrows sweeping the sky and piercing the floor – these are just some of the surreal scenes in Dmitris Papaioannou’s new dance theatre production The Great Tamer. The visual artist, who rose to international prominence after directing the opening of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, has long identified as more of compose

✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stone's Ibsen House Toneelgroep | Amsterdam directed by Simon Stone Simon Stone has turned yet again to the works of Henrik Ibsen as a source of inspiration. Ibsen House is produced in cooperation with the Toneelgroep Amsterdam and performed at the companies’ home base, the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. Over the course of last season Stone has worked together with the Netherland’s largest repertory company on no less then three productions. This new piece, however,

✮✮✮✮ Berg's Lulu Dutch National Opera & Ballet | Amsterdam William Kentridge | Lothar Zagrosek Just who is Lulu? Frank Wedekind’s femme fatale needs a re-think if she is to work for today’s enlightened viewer – at least, so think many contemporary stage directors. For his recent Munich production, director Dmitri Tcherniakov gave audiences Lulu as a borderliner, victim of her own emotional damage. In Amsterdam, William Kentridge sees no such need for re-assessment. He takes

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Seneca's Thyestes in a version by Thomas Henning, Chris Ryan, Simon Stone & Mark Winter Holland Festival | Amsterdam directed by Simon Stone If at this moment in time you believe theatre within the British community is exciting, fresh, challenging and most importantly, life-changing, I’d beg to differ. With a few exceptions, such as Marianne Eliiott and Simon Stephens’ The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, British theatre has the tendency to reside on the