★★★☆☆

Ivo van Hove says that he always wants to offer “the most extreme production possible”. By the fourth hour of watching the superstar director (A View from the Bridge, All About Eve) and his Dutch company reinterpret Ayn Rand’s chunky 1943 novel about rival architects and ideologies in modernist Manhattan, you might think he’s just here to give us the longest production possible.

Oh, there are plenty of pleasures in Van Hove’s characteristically stylish, thoughtful show before then. And you can see how Rand’s divisive paean to individualism has inspired fans such as Donald Trump, who declared himself a fan of her hero, Howard Roark. This brilliant but bloody-minded architect is so devoted to the purity of his art that he