The Fountainhead
Opening Night: November 28, 2017
Closing: December 2, 2017
Theater: BAM Harvey Theater
Its controversy precedes it: Ayn Rand’s notorious 700-page paean to radical individualism, wrapped in a saga of sex, architecture, and skybound ambition. In this brutal reexamination, Belgian director Ivo van Hove updates the action to a buzzing co-working loft, where egos collide over mobile drafting tables and stiff drinks. Blueprints come and go, as idealist New York architect Howard Roark—determined not to conform to public taste—vies with pandering colleagues while navigating the desires of the elusive Dominique Francon. As overhead cameras voyeuristically capture creative and carnal acts from above, Van Hove unravels a bête noire of the left, letting the audience decide where to cast its stones.
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November 29, 2017
It is a continuing astonishment to many a sensible adult that anyone who survived adolescence takes Ayn Rand seriously. Yet admirers of this creator of fat, hyperventilating novels, which extolled “the virtue of selfishness” and the capitalist superhero, have filled conservative power lists for decades.
Those said to take counsel these days from her feverish portraits of egomaniacs at the top include Paul Ryan; Ron and Rand Paul; and the current president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. You may be surprised to learn that this roster has come to include the daring Tony-winning director Ivo van Hove, a creator of productions that might well provoke cries of puritanical censure from the Senate floor.
Yet on the evidence of his adaptation of Rand’s breakthrough novel, “The Fountainhead” (1943), which opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night, she has seldom had a better advocate. Not, I hasten to add, for her ferocious vision of free-market fundamentalism, which has so enchanted right-leaning politicians and economists.
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