James Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” has never been bettered as a noir tale of murder and lust. So much so that there have been seven film adaptations of the 1930s novel, as well as two plays, an opera, and a dance piece. The experimental director Ivo van Hove has chosen to adapt his new production of the potboiler from the 1943 Luchino Visconti film, “Ossessione” (1943). It will star Jude Law as a desirable drifter and open in 2017 at London’s Barbican Center. This will be part of a van Hove residency, which will include a synthesis of Roman tragedies and a double bill of plays based on the Ingmar Bergman films “Persona” and “After the Rehearsal.”Most American audience are familiar with the torrid 1946 Tay Garnett film classic, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, a more explicit but less erotic version of which was delivered in the Bob Rafelson 1981 remake, starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. Garfield starred as Frank, an itinerant handyman whose encounter with Turner’s Cora, the waitress in a rural California diner owned by her much older husband, leads to tragedy. Visconti’s film sticks fairly close to Cain’s plot but the names are Gino, Giovanna, and Giuseppe, who is the cuckolded husband in the couple’s cross hairs.In a statement, van Hove said, “It's very exciting to bring British actors and specifically Jude Law together with actors from our Toneelgroep Amsterdam ensemble for the first time. ‘Obsession’ is a raw and timeless tale about idealised love and its fleeting nature. Major themes that resonate for all time which I am looking forward to staging at the Barbican, a venue I consider to be our London home.”“Idealized love” is an intriguing description for a relationship that leads to a murder, an accidental killing, and a conviction for homicide. Also, as in Emile Zola’s “Therese Raquin,” an adaptation of which played Broadway this season, the murderers’ lust is soon overwhelmed by guilt.Van Hove, long a habitué of international festivals and regional and off-Broadway theater, broke through on Broadway this season in a big way with two acclaimed productions: “A View from the Bridge” and “The Crucible,” both of which are nominated for Best Revival of Play, among other several Tony nominations. He himself is up for best director for “A View from the Bridge.”“The Postman Always Rings Twice” was adapted into a Russian play in 2008, and Val Kilmer starred in an ill-received 2005 West End production, which Matt Wolf panned as “torpid.” Much more successful was “Car Man,” a dance choreographed by Matthew Bourne (“Swan Lake”) that was a very loose adaptation of Cain’s plot married to the music of Bizet’s “Carmen.” First staged in London in 2000, it was revived in 2015.Van Hove obviously has a healthy respect for Visconti’s films; this is his fourth work from that oeuvre. “Rocco and His Brothers” and “Ludwig II” will be joined this summer by the Belgian-born director’s production of Visconti’s 1969 film of Nazi decadence, “The Damned.” It opens this July at the Festival d’Avignon in France.
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