Sophocles’ Oedipus was first performed in Greece in 429 BC. 2,500 years on, it still has the power to shock. Oedipus does not know he has killed his father and marred his mother. The great thing about the play is that the audience, always one step ahead of Oedipus, does know. Robert Icke has created a radical re-imagining of the Greek tragedy and turned it into a modern political thriller, setting it on election night when the votes are being counted. A large digital clock counts down. The better you know the original story the more you will enjoy Icke’s reworking. The production has already been seen in Amsterdam and the Edinburgh Festival with a different cast. The performance opens with a video, a newsreel of Oedipus addressing the cameras and saying he will look into Laius’s death. Laius, the former leader, had died in a car crash. Mark Strong and Lesley Manville make a compelling family-orientated couple, happily married, still sexually active. Oedipus is a decent man, a politician who wants to be translucent, a fatal error in this instance. Jocasta has a more prominent role in Icke’s version. The biggest shock is their immediate reaction when they find out they are mother and son. They have sex voraciously on the floor! And then, in a double whammy, he gouges his eyes with (wait for it) the stiletto heels of her shoes! The audience gasps even more loudly. Creon is Oedipus’s brother-in-law and his campaign manager. Polyneices, Oedipus’s son, is gay, and nobody minds. Merope, Oedipus’s adopted mum, has a key role and June Watson is particularly good when she is outraged by the grandchildren’s language and behaviour. To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website.
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