The Other Fellow: Oedipus @ The Old Vic, London

2025 — the year of Oedipi. Rami Malek and Indira Varma play the fated couple, Oedipus and Jocasta in a more traditional take on the drama. Unlike Robert Icke’s version, where there was creeping sense of dread and almost a detective drama piecing together snippets of information, this has a very present chorus dancing at intervals.

We get less of a sense of Oedipus as statesman than in the Icke drama or the couple’s passion for each other — more the sense of Oedipus and Jocasta as family and a political power unit. The city is also more present here — in the roaring of crowds and in the red and yellow lighting effects to suggest a parched city devoid of water.

It is hard to know what’s going on at points — Oedipus joins the dancing chorus at the beginning — in a riot? In a battle? At other points, the chorus dance to show the suffering and rejoicing of the people. There’s an incredibly clever bit where the rain falls in a focused way on the stage — I was impressed at how localised the stagey rain was. Where it comes together is when Oedipus in informed of his father’s death and that he is now ruler of two cities — he has options again. He takes to the mic to challenge the roaring of the people. Only to be challenged in turn to uncover the mysterious death of his predecessor (Jocasta’s husband) and deal with the wild outpourings from the mysterious oracle.

Throughout we get a sense of Oedipus as father, caring, loving parent and family man. He doesn’t want his daughters to be frightened, sending Jocasta to them to stop them being alone. Wandering in the desert at the end, it’s his daughter who rescues him and guides him. The child actors in this production are charming and really strong in their roles. Jocasta has less agency here as things start to unravel — grabbing her cloak and fleeing for her life. Even Oedipus doesn’t listen to her when she tells him to flee to his new centre of power and leave Thebes to it.

Whilst it is very stylised, it’s also very striking. The lighting is tremendous — at points the stage is drenched in yellow filmic light, uses red light at the back of the stage to create a sense of scale and gravitas, purple and shadow for the rain. At other points we’re plunged into darkness. A literal Selah. Moreover, in a typically British stripped back set, shadows and scale are used to tremendous effect to portray the vastness of the ancient world we’re in. Even at the beginning, the shadowy stage reveals the silhouette of Oedipus’s face.

Rami Malek’s Oedipus perhaps holds too much emotion in — when you expect him to react emotionally, he can barely bat an eyelid. However, at other points, he’s an effective statesman speaking to his people — and pitiable in his ending, wandering wounded and desolate in the desert. Indira Varma’s Jocasta is the more emotional of the two — however for the widow of the former king, we see how little power she has for much of the time. When the truth is revealed, it’s more of a confrontation — oracle vs family Oedipus than the destructive reveal of Icke’s production. Although the starkly lit white square on the stage gives a sense of their cursedness, their set apartness, of isolation — and exposure. The oracle banishes them, dooms them and they are thrown to the ground in horror and grief.

Icke gave us all the emotions and relationships — Ella Hickson, Hofesh Shechter and Matthew Warchus give us all the style. I loved the dancing chorus — they were terrific. Through the staging and lighting we really got a sense of the ancient world of Sophocles, of Thebes as a city and how the crowd could cheer or turn on you in a moment.

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