Oedipus @ Wyndham’s Theatre, London
Powerfully modern and contemporary, we join the family of a political candidate who is determined to tell the truth as a kind of truth and reconciliation commission…This includes the truth about his former incumbent, who happens to be the ex- and deceased — husband of his now wife. He also wants to have a relaxing family evening after a long election campaign whilst they and he await the results…
Robert Icke’s version of Sophocles play tries to fill in the backgrounds of the central characters. Mark Strong and Lesley Manville portray the central couple, Oedipus and Jocasta, very much in love with each other, supportive of each other, in a long marriage. Their openness and trust along with the truth telling seems to be everything. Their openness with each other is quite something. Surrounded by their adult children, who are cliched and bicker constantly — although Mark Strong’s Oedipus promotes honesty and care for each of them.
After a stranger, Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) enters the house with a bizarre prophecy, Oedipus (teetering on an election win, and awaiting the results) becomes even more adamant to investigate the truth of the Lauis’s death and regime. We wait with Oedipus as a clock counts down to the election results being released. In a nice touch a film on the streets nearby has Oedipus giving a rousing ‘vote for me’ speech and almost kissing babies…
Oedipus’s mother also turns up and never quite gets to have the private interview she wants with her son. Instead being caringly carted off from room to room by the charmingly played Corin (Bhasker Patel). Meanwhile Oedipus gets hectored a lot by Michael Gould’s Creon.
In chatting through his investigation, Oedipus remembers a youthful terrible event where he was in a car crash. Jocasta recalls that her husband was killed in a car crash. Memories are jumbled and confused as they all start to pull out the truth. Jocasta hesitatingly, painfully recalls her marriage to Laius at 13 and pregnancy, and her lost, much missed child, despite her bustling family round her. Also the terrible time she had in her first marriage — and the contrast, the joy she has now.
Building with the ticking clock, the truth and their lives start to unravel…and the snippets and fragments of confused information starts to build and build and build…
It is wonderful to see Mark Strong on stage and paired with Lesley Manville — they’re completely believable as a loving power couple, both with painful pasts. Mark Strong is so confident on stage, it’s exhilarating to watch an actor of his calibre in the role. We feel the suffering that Jocasta has endured and how vibrant a women she is after so much pain through Lesley Manville’s masterful portrayal.
However, the play lacks the tragedy at the end; after all the building up, we never get the dramatic crashing down. Rather than Oedipus blinding himself because he can’t bear to face the truth, we have an alternate shocking and gory ending. Oedipus curls into foetal shape, calling for his lost mother in shock. Alarm bells should have been going off already when you realise that the daughter of the family is called Antigone. However, we never feel the tragedy or the horror of who Jocasta and Oedipus are to each other or what that means for them or their family — the play and the way it handles this reveal almost subverts it entirely with a love is love subtext. We never get to the ethics of it all. There’s still tragedy, but not the horrifying implosion Sophocles gives us. A powerful piece, but Theater of War do this much better, giving us the full ethical and emotional heft of these fictional Greek ‘what if…’ dilemmas.
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