Vincent van Gogh is a man who is synonymous with the idea of a tortured genius. Thus, it can become difficult to separate the man from the mythology surrounding him. Vincent van Gogh: Between Worlds written and directed by Paola Veneto, attempts to do exactly that, presenting a more complicated portrait of an artist whose extraordinary sensitivity, difficult relationships, and declining mental health existed alongside his capacity to see beauty in the world.
The production begins with van Gogh’s death before rewinding and exploring his life and artistic development. Alongside Vincent is Riccardo Avati’s ‘Art Student’, a contemporary young man struggling against his family’s expectations that he study economics, settle down, and pursue a conventional career. His visit to the van Gogh Museum becomes the catalyst for the story, with Vincent’s life ultimately inspiring Riccardo to pursue fine art himself.
Avati’s framing role gives the production a useful contemporary perspective, while the historical narrative is carried by Antonio Gargiulo as Vincent, Cloé Xhauflaire as Elisabeth Huberta Du Quesne-van Gogh, Sien, and the narrator, and Will Medland as Theo van Gogh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Roquentin, Gauguin, and the narrator. These multiple roles are ambitious, but they can also make the production difficult to follow for anyone arriving without prior knowledge of van Gogh’s life.
The production deliberately extends beyond conventional biography through Pavel Zelinskiy’s Antonin Artaud. Artaud famously authored the essay Van Gogh the Man Suicided by Society, arguing that van Gogh was sane and had instead been driven towards madness by a hostile society. The production also invokes philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his engagement with the artist. In this, we understand the show’s title, and its interest in placing van Gogh himself “between worlds”: between historical fact and artistic interpretation, madness and perception, and the artist’s century and our own. The concept is interesting, although its execution is not always immediately clear.
Visually, however, Vincent van Gogh: Between Worlds is beautiful. Gargiulo is eerily well cast as Vincent, and his physical resemblance helps establish the character before he even speaks. His performance captures the artist’s intensity and increasingly erratic behaviour, while animated projections of van Gogh’s paintings by Nicola Giordano Guerri transform the surrounding curtains into a living canvas. The moments where performers stand within those projections are particularly effective, and a disco ball becomes an unexpectedly lovely representation of the way Vincent experienced colour and nature.
The staging is otherwise simple, with a stool at its centre keeping the focus on Vincent’s body language while the narrators construct the surrounding history. Actors entering from the back of the room and moving around the audience make excellent use of the space, while Giacomo del Colle Lauri Volpi’s original music and Juan Pablo Trillo’s live piano provide a gorgeous accompaniment throughout. The restrained lighting supports the changing moods and transitions without competing with the artwork and performance.
The production is also commendably unwilling to present van Gogh as simply a “misunderstood hero”. His abandonment of Sien, his obsessive devotion to painting, his violence and his deteriorating mental health are all examined. Xhauflaire’s Sien delivers a particularly powerful monologue, giving emotional weight to the consequences of Vincent’s choices. The later hospital scenes are similarly affecting, highlighting how little understanding there was of mental illness and how readily people experiencing severe psychological distress could be treated as irredeemable.
Some choices, however, are more difficult to interpret. Zelinskiy’s Artaud enters dramatically from the back of the auditorium, frequently delivering highly physical, loud monologues, while illuminating his face with a torch. The disruption is clearly intentional but without a stronger contextual link to his purpose, these scenes can feel bewildering rather than illuminating. His repeated shirtlessness is similarly difficult to connect to the wider production. There is also a tendency to rely on shouting to communicate emotional intensity, while some individual exchanges are harder to follow.
The production eventually brings its disparate strands together. As van Gogh’s life approaches its tragic conclusion, the emotional impact becomes much stronger, particularly in the recognition that The Starry Night was created while he was in the asylum at Saint-Rémy. The question of what van Gogh could see, and whether his altered perception should be understood as illness, insight, or something more complicated altogether, is at the heart of this production.
“Artists speak to future generations through their work”, the show tells us. That is ultimately what Vincent van Gogh: Between Worlds captures best. Whatever its occasional confusion, van Gogh’s paintings remain its most powerful argument: that art can outlive its creator, cross centuries, and speak to people who have never known the person who made them.
A visually striking and deeply compassionate production, Vincent van Gogh: Between Worlds may ask rather a lot of its audience without always providing enough signposting, but there is real beauty in its attempt to bring a complicated historical figure back to life.
Vincent van Gogh: Between Worlds is at Assembly Underground, George Square from 6-30 (except 17) August 2026 at 3:30pm.
Theatre Scotland 
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