Last Updated on October 19, 2024
Thrills, ancient and modern
Writer and director Robert Icke’s (Oresteia, 1984, The Doctor) modern reimagining of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy has opened on the West End stage with a starry cast led by Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. In Icke’s hands, many of the main plot points and themes from the 5th century BC version of Oedipus have been loosely transported into modern times and into a new play that is a highly charged political and family psychodrama.
The drama opens with video footage of Oedipus being interviewed on the verge of a great election victory. He makes two last-minute off-script promises to the people on camera – a decision that will have unintended consequences. He announces that if he wins he will release his birth certificate for all to see (a nod, of course, to the hounding of Barack Obama over his birthplace). His second pronouncement is that he will order an official investigation into the death of a former leader, Laius, 34 years previously. Fired by his rash desire to discover and then unleash the truth, Oedipus sets himself on a course towards disaster.
Back at the campaign HQ, brother-in-law and advisor Creon (Michael Gould) cautions that most leaders would discuss all public statements with their team first. “I am me,” rails Oedipus. His ego will out but cautious Creon clearly wants to keep it contained, later warning him as things unravel: “Your honesty fetish is going to tear everything apart.”
A stranger breaches security – Creon describes him as one of those fortune-telling people, implying there are many such cranks around at election time.
“I come to warn you, not to help you,” Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) tells Oedipus. But Oedipus laughs off his predictions: that he will kill his father and become his mother’s lover and that Creon will be leader. “You see and you wish you were blind,” forewarns the fortune-teller.
The oracle’s presence and the prophecies sit uneasily in a drama set about a supposedly rational politician in the 21st century. But later Icke has sparky daughter Antigone (Phia Saban) stating the family position on fortune-telling, pointing out that she didn’t think they went in for that sort of stuff. Then the Reagans and their astrologer come to mind. Perhaps not so unlikely then.
We’re never quite sure whether the clever set (designed by Hildegard Bechtler) represents a campaign HQ, an office, a family home, or most probably all of those things. A digital clock counts down the minutes and seconds until the election result and is also an ominous reminder of the coming disaster. As the action unfolds, the space is cleared of furniture, leading us neatly back to another of Oedipus’s forks in the road.
Oedipus is as much a family drama as a political one. A set-piece surprise meal introduces us to the full family and a mix of high spirits and high tensions simmer up and down over the course of the evening.
Nods to Freud and his delvings into myth to describe the human condition litter the play. “Father issues,” quips Jocasta when talking about the possible reason for her relationship with the far older Laius.
All charm one moment, quick to anger the next, Oedipus is brought to convincing life as a modern politician, husband and a family man by a sinuous Mark Strong. At the centre of the piece is the palpable and then disturbing chemistry between his Oedipus and Jocasta, played with sharp wit by Lesley Manville. They are supported by a strong ensemble, with a marvellous turn from June Watson as Merope (the other mother and excellent in opposition to Manville as warring wife and mother-in-law).
Icke’s take on Oedipus makes for a compelling night at the theatre. Perhaps a truly modern version, though, would have Oedipus and Jocasta spending their remaining years lying on separate couches undergoing intensive Freudian psychoanalysis rather than succumbing to their terrible fates of Ancient Greek myth.
Oedipus is playing until 4 January 2025 at
Wyndham’s Theatre,
Charing Cross Rd,
London WC2H 0DA
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