Latest news with #Sophocles'
The Guardian
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Robert Icke's modern-day Oedipus triumphs at Critics' Circle theatre awards
A modern-day version of Oedipus, which turned Sophocles' tragic leader into a politician awaiting election results, has won three prizes at the Critics' Circle theatre awards. Robert Icke won best director for the production (which he adapted), with Mark Strong named best actor and Lesley Manville best actress. All three are up for Olivier awards next month. Receiving ecstatic reviews, Oedipus became a hot ticket at Wyndham's theatre after previous runs using actors from Internationaal Theater Amsterdam at the Edinburgh festival and in the Netherlands. The other victorious actors at the awards, voted for by professional theatre critics who are members of the Critics' Circle, were Francesca Amewudah-Rivers with her West End debut and Danny Sapani for his King Lear. Amewudah-Rivers was named best newcomer for her performance as Juliet, opposite Tom Holland, in Jamie Lloyd's version of Romeo & Juliet at the Duke of York's theatre. Sapani was recognised with the award for best Shakespearean performance; his Lear was directed by Yaël Farber at the Almeida. Mark Rosenblatt received two awards for his debut play, Giant, an exploration of author Roald Dahl's antisemitism. Rosenblatt was named most promising playwright and also received the Michael Billington award for best new play, named in honour of the Guardian's former chief theatre critic. Giant ran last year at the Royal Court and will transfer to the West End next month, with John Lithgow resuming his role as Dahl. Frankie Bradshaw was named best designer in recognition of two National Theatre shows: Ballet Shoes and Dear Octopus. The prize for best musical went to the Regent's Park Open Air theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof which is transferring to the Barbican and has been nominated for a record-tying 13 Olivier awards. In 2023 the Critics' Circle announced that it would incorporate the Empty Space Peter Brook award for innovative venue as one of its categories. This year's winner is the Yard theatre in east London, which artistic director Jay Miller launched in a warehouse in 2011. The Yard is staging its final production, The Glass Menagerie, in its current home before the theatre is demolished. Having raised more than £6m in capital funding, it will move into a new 220-seat venue, designed by Takero Shimazaki Architects, expected to open in 2026.
New York Times
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Can Movie Stars Handle Greek Classics? London Is Finding Out.
At the Old Vic theater in London, a tenebrous stage is lit now and again with deep, yellowy-orange hues; at its center is a stark solar orb. The effect is soothing, like being gently woken by an enormous sunrise alarm. The setting is a drought-stricken Thebes and the play is a reimagining of Sophocles' tragedy, 'Oedipus Rex,' first performed around 429 B.C. and relevant as ever in our era of vainglorious leaders. King Oedipus, played by the movie star Rami Malek — best known for his Oscar-winning performance in 'Bohemian Rhapsody' — wants to figure out who killed his predecessor, Laius, in hopes that solving the mystery will bring an end to the drought. In the process, he stumbles upon a series of revelations that bear out the truth of the Oracle's infamous prediction: that he is destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. In this production, running through March 29, the story is set in a featureless, vaguely postapocalyptic landscape and told through a blend of drama and dance. (The Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter shares the directorial credit with the Old Vic's artistic director, Matthew Warchus.) Between scenes, a chorus throws beautifully unsettling shapes to a soundtrack of moody electronic beats and pounding drums. The dancers' twitchy, convulsive movements and supplicatory body language evoke the plight of a suffering populace, but once the truth is out and the gods appeased, the rain comes and the chorus moves with unburdened grace under a glorious drizzle. (Set design is by Rae Smith, lighting by Tom Visser.) Malek's assertive drawl and blithe, can-do rhetoric carry hints of President Trump. ('Whatever the Oracle gives us. … I can work with that!') And Indira Varma brings a suitably regal poise to the role of Jocasta, who was long ago forced by Laius to abandon her baby. That child was Oedipus himself; he was rescued, adopted and went on to marry Jocasta. But Ella Hickson's script, adapted freely from Sophocles's original, is thin and occasionally clunky, and Malek struggles to breathe life into it. His anguish simply doesn't convince. When he learns that the mother of his children is actually his own mother, he summons only the rueful demeanor of someone who narrowly missed a subway train. This 'Oedipus' is visually arresting, but weak theater. In a scheduling oddity worthy of London's uneven bus service, The Old Vic's production was the second 'Oedipus' running in the city in the last few weeks. Robert Icke's adaptation, which recently closed at Wyndham's Theater, had originally been scheduled to run in 2020, but was postponed because of the pandemic. In contrast to Hickson's staging, Icke situated Sophocles' tale in a recognizably contemporary political milieu: It's election night, and the title character (Mark Strong) is anticipating a landslide victory. The action unfolds in a campaign room strewed with pizza boxes and placards; in the foreground, a large digital clock ticks an ominous countdown. (The set is by Hildegard Bechtler.) This Oedipus is a picture of sensitive, evolved masculinity. But his commitment to the truth undoes him when he becomes the subject of a birtherist smear. Rather than sweep it under the rug, he insists on clearing things up — with devastating consequences. Strong's statuesque aspect and plaintive bearing befit the tragic hero. With his tall, lean frame and shaven head, he is more silhouette than man. Lesley Manville's Jocasta dotes aggressively, suggesting a sublimated maternal impulse, or perhaps even unconscious knowledge of the terrible truth. In a risqué scene in which Oedipus performs cunnilingus on Jocasta under her skirt, her moans of pleasure — 'oh baby, baby, baby' — are an exquisitely ironic touch. Conceived in the wake of President Trump's 2016 election victory, Icke's 'Oedipus' doubles as a maudlin comment on the travails of center-left parties. As of 2025, it hasn't exactly dated. But the show is best enjoyed as pure theater. The protagonist's sheer obliviousness, and apparent decency, accentuate the pathos: 'Nobody slips anything past me,' Oedipus brags to his son — but the audience knows his whole existence has been a lie. Tension builds as the clock counts down and the pieces of back story slot into place like some cruel game of Tetris. While Malek toils as Oedipus at the Old Vic, another big-screen celebrity is making her West End debut in a lesser-spotted Sophocles play. Brie Larson, of 'Room' fame and, more recently, Disney's 'The Marvels,' plays the title character in 'Elektra,' plotting revenge after her mother, Clytemnestra (Stockard Channing), murders her father, Agamemnon. This production, in a new translation by Anne Carson, runs at the Duke of York's Theater through April 12. In it, a crew-cut Larson stalks the stage in a Bikini Kill vest and ripped jeans, declaiming into a hand-held mic, and a six-strong chorus moves the story along in bursts of harmonious song Whenever Larson has to say the word 'no,' she sings it, rather than speaking — a motif that emphasizes Elektra's implacable defiance. Her refusal to accept her mother's lover Aegisthus (Greg Hicks), out of respect for her father's memory, has resulted in her being ostracized from the family: In contrast to Elektra's punky get-up, the other members of the household appear in opulent fur coats. (The costumes are by Doey Lüthi.) Aside from the denouement — in which Elektra's long-lost brother Orestes (Patrick Vaill) returns to deliver Aegisthus's comeuppance — the play is largely uneventful. To offset this, the show's director, Daniel Fish — whose 'Oklahoma' was a hit on and Off Broadway before a favorable London transfer — gives the audience a mishmash of embellishments to puzzle over. A blimp hangs above the revolving stage. A gun on a tripod douses the performers with spray paint. Incongruous snatches of news audio play during a pivotal scene. Why? Channing's glibly nonchalant Clytemnestra feels apposite, and the verbal sparring between mother and daughter provides a welcome sprinkling of mirth. But the abstracted, bloodless deliveries of the other actors are less than engaging. Larson, for all her energy, has a weirdly perfunctory, one-note intensity. Larson hadn't trodden the boards in over a decade before taking on this role; Malek, similarly, hasn't been onstage since early in his career. Reflecting on this, alongside the recent disappointment of Sigourney Weaver's London 'Tempest,' we might draw the following conclusions: first, that theater acting and screen acting are not the same thing, and that someone might excel at one but not the other; and second, that something is amiss when producers are routinely enticing theatergoers with stardust, only to shortchange them.
The Guardian
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Oedipus review – delirious dancers and booming soundtrack shake the plasterwork
Dance in Greek tragedy – why not? The ancient Athenians did it, their choruses a weave of sound and movement, though no one really knows what shapes they threw back in the fifth century. They probably didn't give the hands-in-the-air delirium of Hofesh Shechter's spectacular dancers in this new version of Oedipus – but dance becomes the irresistible core of the tragedy. Shechter and Matthew Warchus co-direct a text by Ella Hickson (The Writer). In a freak of scheduling, they follow Robert Icke's inexorable modern-dress Oedipus: two very different takes on Sophocles' family values. Here, Thebes gasps with drought under a harsh red sun and Tom Visser's lighting, a dust storm in charcoal and crimson. King Oedipus resolves to save his people, either by leading them to fertile ground or solving the ancient murder that a faction of hardline believers argue has angered the gods. Big mistake, huge. Rami Malek's air of having dropped from another planet has served him well on film as a Bond villain or Freddie Mercury. He brings outsider vibes to Oedipus – speaking in an elusive American drawl, adopting the mantle of leadership like a haunted robot. Confession later fractures his speech – he becomes shambling, disjointed, bones awkwardly resettling in his body. The truth remakes Oedipus, and then undoes him. Oedipus claims to lead with 'courage, conviction and ingenuity' – the very qualities which brought him to power will destroy him as he stubbornly pursues his terrible identity. As the state's climate change emergency is derailed by a cold case, he sifts through box files and summons the prophet Tiresias. 'Bring in a raving hermit, that'll do it,' scoffs his wife, Jocasta – though Cecilia Noble makes a strikingly disgruntled seer, feet planted wide, unleashing the truth in a wide-mouthed cackle. Shechter's soundtrack of fervent chants and wild drums rattles the Old Vic's plasterwork, volume rising like panic, and his dancers are on fire. They're mosh pit ecstatics – hands raised in plea or pleasure, lolloping, squirming. They scrabble, shuffle or form a serpentine scrawl of bodies. There's no literal transposition of Sophocles' choruses – no dance equivalent of 'call no man happy till he dies' – but their delirium leeches into your blood. You feel them lost in the stomp, consumed by physical impulses even as Oedipus struggles to unwind a mystery. 'People need to struggle with nuance and difficulty,' Oedipus huffs. But while the movement offers a superb, needling ambiguity, Hickson's text is parched. She struggles to find a resonant public register ('we feel your pain') or an intimacy for her private scenes: 'Darkness is the soil in which I nurture my humility' sounds like a shonky translation. Indira Varma's elegantly sceptical queen (cheekbones, pashmina) gets the best lines, resisting her brother Creon (Nicholas Khan), a black-clad theocrat with an itch for power. The ancient pollution is named and rain falls again. The blissed-out chorus spin, feet raising happy spumes of water – they appear fundamentally unbothered by the destructive, seamy dynamics of the royal drama. You're left with a sense of futility – what has it all been for, the destructive pursuit of truth, the secrets and cries?
