Edinburgh 2022: Review: A LITTLE LIFE, Festival Theatre

There is light at the end of the tunnel that is Ivo van Hove's stage adaptation of A Little Life. But it's a very long tunnel.

For some the thought of a four-hour long adaption of the critically acclaimed 736-page novel is artistic masochism reserved for only the most hardened theatre goers. Making its UK premier at the Edinburgh International Festival, it is the kind of play one would expect someone to see just so that they can proudly proclaim that have sat through it. This is especially the case when all of the horror of Yanagihara's novel is rendered in its unflinching totality by Van Hove and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. It's also in Dutch with English surtitles. And it's over four hours long.

Despite these obstacles Van Hove crafts something brutally essential as a piece of art. He is incredibly careful with what he does and does not show. There are graphic and bloody depictions of grisly self-harm, trauma, and child sexual abuse. Koen Tachelet's adaption is comprised of both third person narration and soliloquies. The effect is tremendous. It is realism but not realistic: the force of the on-stage pain is palpable but without gratuitousness or shock to distract from the rawness of the emotional topography. There is always critical distance between us and the pain.

For those wondering why A Little Life deserves a stage adaption, this is why. Van Hove demands that his audience see and recognise trauma up close, in doing so questioning what it means to be a spectator of violence in the 21st century.

It is no coincidence that there are audiences sitting on both sides of the stage: We can see each other, and we can see each other seeing each other. We are aware of the very dialectic we are creating as spectators: mutual seeing, recognising, knowing. We bear witness as human beings. The pain of the violence that we are confronted with in our lives is muted through the screens that mediate them. But here we are not passive entities being fed pixelated images, we are present and alive, something only theatre as a medium could achieve.

Recognition of one's own trauma and the trauma of others is a central theme of A Little Life. The main character Jude's refusal to process his fractured psyche can only be revealed in its gruesomeness when others, particularly his friend turned lover Wilhelm, can see it and recognise it. The recounting of his trauma is played out with his social worker standing witness. We are watching someone else watching, thereby understanding what it is to be a witness to such horror.

The nastiness also gives rise to light which is magnified in the darkness. Harold's, Jude's adoptive father, and Willems', unrequited love is accentuated beautifully in contrast to the searing pain. Some will not be able to overcome the gore. But we ought not to shy away; it is necessary to see violence without the pain or threat so that we can recognise what it really means.

Art does exactly this and both Van Hove and Yanagihara know it: Jude's psyche begins to unravel when he sees a portrait of himself painted by his housemate JB depicting him in an emotionally vulnerable state. It suddenly lets him see beyond the physical and transcend the immediacy of his reality. Art shows him his truth. Art shows us our truth.

A review for A Little Life cannot ignore Ramsey Nasr who delivers a breath-taking marathon of a performance as Jude. To capture his palimpsestic trauma and the corporeality of Jude's chronic pain is a true feat of performance; it is no surprise that he won the prestigious Louis d'Or for the role in 2019. Hans Kesting, another critically acclaimed and award-winning Dutch actor, multi-rolling as each of Jude's tormentors is as inspired creative choice just as it is horrendous to witness. His presence blends into a symbol of unspeakably haunting torment.

So, whilst the light is at the end of a very long tunnel, the light is always visible.

A Little Life plays as part of the Edinburgh International Festival until 22 August

Photo Credit: Jessica Shurte

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