Clairevan Kampen

Press

• Farinelli and the King

  Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London

  Aug 2015

  • Plays about mad kings are always popular. After Alan Bennett’s portrait of George III, we now have Claire van Kampen’s fascinating study of the healing impact of music on Spain’s French-born Philippe V. With Mark Rylance as the king, the evening is guaranteed success, but what it really proves is how ideally suited this intimate space is to the mix of drama and music. The story Van Kampen has to tell is itself extraordinary...It all makes for a richly unusual evening that not only demonstrates music’s curative power for a mad king but its ability to offer spiritual uplift to just about everyone else.

    • The Guardian
    • 23 February 2015

• Othello

  Shakespeare's Globe, London

  Aug 2018

  • ...the ensemble have great energy, which van Kampen puts to good use in the revelling scene in Act Two. Her score is excellent, by turns bouncy and melancholy; her version of the willow song is hauntingly beautiful.

    • The Arts Desk
    • 02 August 2018

• Idaspe

  Quantam Theatre, Pittsburgh

  Oct 2022

  • It’s a lot like “Days of Our Lives,” or, rather, “Giorni della nostra vita” as the grand melodrama is sung in Italian with English subtitles...it all works. Thanks, mostly, to van Kampen and Chatham Baroque’s imaginative retelling of Riccardo Broschi’s opera from 1730.

    • Burgh Vivant
    • 08 October 2022