2666
Opening Night: February 6, 2016
Closing: March 20, 2016
Theater: Goodman Theatre
A soaring adaptation of Chilean-born author Roberto Bolaño’s masterpiece, “2666” begins with a group of hapless European academics hot on the trail of an elusive author—a search that leads them into the dark heart of a Mexican border city where the murders of hundreds of women remain unsolved. This story gives way to a surprising, panoramic portrait of the 20th century that spans more than 100 years and jumps from Spain to Mexico to Germany and beyond, illuminating the power of literature to reflect and transform the world. An unflinching look at the nature of evil, “2666” is an ambitious new work unlike any other theatrical experience.
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February 16, 2016
The obvious challenge in adapting a novel to the stage is how to make a story lying flat on the page leap to three-dimensional life. The task is particularly confounding in the case of “2666,” Roberto Bolaño’s magnum opus, published after his death at 50 in 2003. The book spans two continents, nearly a century, two converging story lines — each dangling digressions like an overtrimmed Christmas tree — and runs to around 900 pages of dense prose. Robert Falls, artistic director of the Goodman Theater here, apparently never met a challenge he didn’t jump to meet. In a program note he writes, sensibly, that “2666” is “probably the last novel that one would consider adapting for the stage.” Consider it he did, nonetheless, and he and Seth Bockley, sharing adapting and directing credit, have wrestled Bolaño’s loose, baggy monster of a book (to borrow a Henry James phrase) onto the stage, transforming it into a five-and-a-half-hour production that opened on Tuesday.
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