Fate is a funny thing. Just as it’s hardly Oedipus’s fault that he kills his dad and sleeps with his mum - sorry if you didn’t know that, but 2,500 years and your own Freudian subconscious should have given it away by now - it’s not this production’s fault that it comes in the immediate wake of a brilliantly agonising adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedy by Robert Icke, starring Lesley Manville and Mark Strong.
In fact, if it weren’t for the supernova-level pull of Oscar-winning actor Rami Malek, it’s likely that this Oedipus would have felt like one tragedy too many, especially opening in the same week as another Oscar winner, Brie Larson, takes on another Greek tragedy, Elektra.
