Robert Icke’s version of Oedipus isn’t just an adaptation to fit it into modern dress but a radical reworking built around the important plot points of the legend that is really a gripping new play.
It premièred in Dutch six years ago, presented by Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, and was originally planned pre-COVID to open in London in 2020 with Helen Mirren. Now it arrives with stunning performances from Mark Strong as Oedipus and Lesley Manville as Jocasta.
It is set on election night in the campaign office of politician Oedipus who seems all set to become the next leader of Thebes. It starts with a filmed sequence, first of Oedipus campaigning and an interview in which he makes off-the-cuff promises to open up a new investigation of the death many years ago of former leader Laius and to produce his birth certificate to confirm his eligibility. It then moves to campaign headquarters where Hildegard Bechtler’s set includes a digital countdown, not just of polling time but marking for us how long before Oedipus’ life will implode.
His whole family are gathered there, hopeful and ready to celebrate. Brother-in-law and campaign manager Creon is already concerned that those promises, made without consultation, could cause problems. How will be obvious to all who know the story, its unfolding shocking to those who do not, and Icke’s reworking also presents new, gripping revelations.
This is a believable family, but their individual behaviour already prefigures what happens to them in follow-on tragedies. Tiresias (Samuel Brewer), the street-living fortune-teller who barges in to warn Oedipus, already predicts future power for Creon (Michael Gould). Sons Eteocles (Jordan Scowen) and Polyneices (James Wilbraham) are confrontational, their spirited sister Antigone (Phia Saban) already seen facing up to her uncle.
Information doesn’t necessarily come from the same sources as in Sophocles’ telling. Merope (June Watson), whom Oedipus believes is his mother, has left her dying husband in a coma to tell him a secret (if only he could find time to hear her), while Jocasta’s devoted friend Corin (Gary McDonald) has for over half a century kept a secret he shares with her, and the driver of the car in which Laius died has stuck to the story he was told to give 35 years ago to avoid scandal.
It is a strong story delivered through strong performances. Central is that of Mark Strong as Oedipus, a good man and an honest one in a political world of lies and fake news, a loving father close to Antigone, supportive of a son coming out as gay and with Jocasta still a passionate lover, but Strong also gives him a hint of hubris as well as humility. He is touchingly moving as he eventually gives time to Merope, a maelstrom of emotion when his world begins to collapse.
We learn much more about Jocasta than Sophocles tells us, and Lesley Manville gives a gripping performance that shows a confident woman who has put the past behind her seeing it rise like a spectre. She is especially moving as she remembers her ordeal as a 13-year-old bearing a child fathered by Laius and having to part with it, and even more passionate than Oedipus in a scene with both bursting with sexual energy.
June Watson also delivers a standout performance when eventually allowed to unburden herself of the secret she has been keeping.
Sophocles or Icke, Oedipus is a tragedy, but in Icke’s version, there are moments of humour (and others, perhaps not intended) when parts of the audience react with laughter that relieves tension, for this becomes a dark story about real people, not a myth from the distant past.