Haunting Memories of Daddy Dearest in 'Festen'
Ben BrantleyApril 10, 2006: Home is a black hole in "Festen," the intensely staged, indifferently acted domestic shocker that opened last night at the Music Box Theater. As conceived by the director Rufus Norris and a design team of inspired austerity, David Eldridge's adaptation of a 1998 Danish film about a family reunion seems to exist entirely on the edge of an unconditional darkness, a magnetic maw just waiting to suck you in. Rendered in a sea of shadow in which light feels wan and provisional, this is home as it appears in the most unforgiving nightmares of adults about their childhoods — a place that saps will, courage and any semblance of an autonomous self.
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