Lesley Manville and Mark Strong are spellbinding in Robert Icke’s wrenchingly tense reworking of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy. Here Oedipus is an insurgent political wunderkind, a bit Macron and a bit Obama. His promise to govern openly and honestly opens up the worst possible cache of family secrets, from patricide to incest.
Strong’s smart, passionate, utterly believable relationship with the luminous Manville as his older wife Jocasta roots the unravelling suspense as a rear-stage digital clock ticks down to Oedipus’s election victory.
A fine supporting cast, and the familiar Icke tools of dialogue that sounds both antique and modern, and a dislocating soundtrack, are used to brilliant effect. At the risk of blurting out the worst-kept spoiler in theatre history, this show is mother**in’ good.
At first, Icke’s dusting of contemporary relevance seems too heavy. We see Oedipus on screen amid placard-waving admirers, calling out fake news and promising to publish his birth certificate. Then the curtain rises and we’re plunged into the credible milieu of a nervously excited campaign headquarters.
Oedipus is surprised by soothsayer Tiresias, here imagined as a blind, homeless savant, and takes it out on his campaign manager, Creon (Michael Gould), Jocasta’s brother.
A bit unfair. But then, Oedipus’s father is dying and his mother Merope (magisterial June Watson) has something vital to impart that he doesn’t have time to hear. Then his and Jocasta’s boisterous adult children burst in and we’re engulfed in the reality of a tight, fraught family about to enter the political spotlight.
Strong has superb pacing and physical awareness, his lithe, shaven-headed form switching from loose daddish warmth to vulpine alertness and stricken anguish in a heartbeat. And surely there is no finer actress working today than Manville, who’s excelled at the Royal Court, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, and conquered Hollywood (The Phantom Thread), British sitcom (Mum) and lockdown binge-watch (Sherwood).
Icke provides a devastating speech for Manville’s Jocasta about her first husband Laius that makes sense of the tragedy’s troubling timeline. Her performance of this is as profound as the physical intimacy she brings to her relationship with Strong’s Oedipus, and her sardonic asides as both a wife and a mother.
As in his previous free adaptations of plays by the Greeks and Chekhov, Icke invokes a sense of the past in a vivid contemporary milieu: his Shakespeare productions stick to the original text.
This show was originally staged by the Internationaal Theater of Amsterdam. It’s amazing to see it in London now, not least because Alexander Zeldin’s updating of Sophocles’ Antigone, about Oedipus’s offspring, is currently at the National.
A few lines here are too on the nose. Icke’s techniques are starting to look familiar rather than radical. Nonetheless, this is an extraordinary evening, thanks to him, Strong and Manville.
