The most contemporary, trenchant new play on Broadway is Robert Ickes’ searing new adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus, which opened Thursday in a mesmerizing production that stands as one of the memorable nights of theater you are ever likely to experience. The pitch-perfect show opens with a video projected onto the full curtain of Studio 54 where our suited hero (Mark Strong), a politician on election day, addresses news cameras and sign-wielding political supporters promising a new era of honesty and forthrightness in the body politic. Oedipus vows to squelch questions about his status as a foreigner (“My opponent loves the idea this country isn’t my country… My identity doesn’t fit”) by releasing his birth certificate — shades of Barack Obama, anyone? — and to launch a full investigation into the death of the beloved previous ruler Laius that has been the subject of conspiracy theories for decades.
What we know and Oedipus does not is that his sincere effort to settle any doubts about his lineage or tamp down speculation about Laius’ mysterious passing will backfire on him in a very big way. He was the one who killed Laius, though he doesn’t know it, and his birth certificate will reveal that he was adopted by the parents he thought were his own but that his birth mother is actually his wife, Jacosta (Lesley Manville), who also happens to be Laius’ widow.
Ickes, who’s gained a reputation for reimagined classics like Hamlet and Aeschylus’ Oresteia, has found ingenious ways to make this centuries-old Greek tragedy feel fresh and of the moment while hewing closely to foundations of the original text. The blind prophet Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) has become a religious zealot in a stained sleeveless t-shirt whose sloven appearance makes his prophesies all too easy for Oedipus to dismiss (at least initially). Creon (John Carroll Lynch) is not only Jocasta’s brother-in-law but also the campaign manager, a man whom Oedipus has long suspected of disloyalty and who earns his wrath and very public ouster for allowing Teiresias anywhere near him at campaign headquarters as the favorable vote tallies are rolling in.
The action all takes place in a campaign meeting room (sleekly designed by Hildegard Bechtler and lit by Natasha Chivers) that is lined with TVs and an onstage countdown clock that provides a real-time ticker not to the closing of the polls but to the big revelation that will implode the lives of Oedipus, Jocasta, and everyone in their circle. The headquarters is a place of transition that becomes increasingly barer as the show proceeds, with staffers removing furniture and rolling up carpets to signal how the accoutrements of power are being stripped away before our eyes. Ickes has transformed a dusty Greek drama into a pulsing political thriller whose parallels to recent political history feel both timely and earned.
Manville is devastating as Jocasta, a natural political spouse who is eager to step back into the spotlight she ceded after Laius’ death but who knows that she can only nudge her headstrong husband so much. She can be motherly and nurturing one moment, and then the consummate adviser the next, before turning up the sensual heat in quiet moments with the husband she clearly adores. (Wojciech Dziedzic’s costumes reflect the transitions in her character.) Strong matches her energy with a performance that shows both charisma and insecurity, an earnest desire to do good that can be thwarted by his character’s impetuous nature and quick temper.
He’s particularly strong in his playful interactions with his mostly grown children, who here number three. Daughter Antigone (Olivia Reis) is a book-clutching academic studying the difference between a paradox and a riddle (“One’s got a solution — one’s just something you have to live with”). The two sons, philandering Eteocles (Jordan Scowen) and soon-to-be-outed gay son Polyneices (James Wilbraham), squabble with each other so that their mutual secrets are out in the open. In the latter case, at least Polyneices gets a sweet heart-to-heart with dad — the rare case of an unexpectedly public revelation that doesn’t tumble automatically into tragedy.
But devastation is just around the corner — a fact that’s emphasized in Ickes’ suspenseful staging, Tom Gibbons’ dread-inducing sound design, and that countdown clock that hovers just behind the players. Also hovering is Merope, the woman who raised Oedipus as her own, who’s left her husband’s death bed to come clean about Oedipus’ origin since he’s called for the release of a birth certificate she knows was forged. Oedipus continually puts her off, and Jocasta seems to bristle at her very presence — ever the stereotypical meddling mother-in-law. But Merope is not a woman to be trifled with; she may be plainspoken and dowdily dressed, but she will have her say. At one point, she even picks up on how Antigone hasn’t cracked the book she so showily brought with her: “The reason you brought it isn’t to read it. It’s to remind him that there’s things he doesn’t know,” she tells her granddaughter, intuiting the nuances in Antigone’s relationship with her dad. And then Merope just as acutely adds: “Which tells me, you’ll be fine.” (Those with a knowledge of Sophocles’ later drama Antigone will know that’s not entirely true.)
Like Teiresias, Merope understands that Oedipus’ world is about to implode — though Ickes smartly insures that no one character has the full picture of the family history until the details leak out bit by bit. By the time that countdown clock hits zero, and the penny drops for both Oedipus and Jocasta, there is no turning back. The final scenes, as Strong and Manville wrestle with the full ramifications of their unwitting actions, unspool with a furious inevitability that is difficult to watch and impossible to look away from. Ickes and his cast have achieved something truly remarkable, producing a classic that doesn’t feel like a revival at all. Oedipus may be the best play of the decade, and also the most contemporary. ★★★★★
OEDIPUS
Studio 54, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through February 9 for $69 to $348
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