Oedipus
There was a theatre-world kerfuffle last year when both the Old Vic and West End producer Sonia Friedman announced productions of Sophocles’s two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old classic Oedipus on the same evening.
In actual fact it is hard to imagine two theatre shows with less in common, based on the same story or not. Where the West End Robert Icke-directed version was a meticulously modernised restoration of the tragedy in which the director had gone to great lengths to try transpose the old impact into new language, the Old Vic Oedipus – adapted by Ella Hickson – is just completely fucking nuts.
A start would be to note that it’s co-directed by Old Vic boss Matthew Warchus and the great choreographer Hofesh Shechter. So there is dance in it: though the pounding, techno soundtracked movement sequences feel separated from the main action, they do effectively establish the sense that the city of Thebes has been overrun by ecstatic fanatics, a debilitating religious fervour consuming the city in its hour of need.
Having been subject to the enlightened rule of Oedipus for the past 20 years (ever since the last king died mysteriously), Thebes is now paralysed by drought and superstition. The people dance frenziedly to try to persuade the gods to bring them rain. But none is forthcoming. Climate change is never mentioned, but given Hickson’s main thrust seems to be interrogating the religious assumptions that underpin the story, it feels like there’s an underlying question...
