Lesley Manville and Mark Strong lead a scorching Oedipus from Robert Icke at the Wyndham’s Theatre, with June Watson also impressing once again
“They tell me there’s a storm coming tonight.
That sounds about right”
Drum beats fill the air ominously. A clock inexorably counts down to a point of no return. A contemporary sheen covers the set but there’s no escaping the power of the ancient here. Robert Icke’s Oedipus finally arrives on the West End (this production was initially announced for 2020 with Helen Mirren attached), his adaptation of Sophocles reminding us that the ancient Greeks knew what they were doing and that he has considerable previous form in this arena (the Almeida’s Oresteia).
This production was premiered in the Netherlands for Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (Toneelgroep Amsterdam as was) and it was simply phenomenal then. With Mark Strong and Lesley Manville leading the cast here, alongside some fantastic ensemble players, this Oedipus has lost none of its power in the intervening six years – scorchingly good whether you know what is come or not (speaking of which, avoid the Guardian’s review until after you’ve seen it as it is shockingly filled with spoilers, a real arrogance there in presuming everyone knows the plot).
Icke transplants the action to the current day. Strong’s Orpheus is a slick politician in the Obama mould (you could argue this dates it but Trump is still questioning the identity of his rivals…) and the mood couldn’t be better on election night. His family gather for a meal before the result is announced and the atmosphere is raucous and rambunctious – wife Jocasta is imperiously confident, daughter Antigone is riling everyone up, sons Polynices and Eteocles are full of squabbles and secrets, mother Merope desperate to talk to her son to discuss a pressing private matter flagged up by his desire to publish his birth certificate.
It’s a densely packed opening half, plaiting the various strands of this family’s inter-relations with a healthy dose of foreshadowing but it is supremely done. Phia Saban, Jordan Scowen and James Wilbraham are achingly good as the younger generation of the family, blithely full of love and energy, and June Watson is so very good as the dignified Merope, trying so hard not to lose patience with every delay of the truth bomb she knows she has to deliver. But Manville and Strong make this one of the most essential things to see on a London stage right now.
The sheer force of their connection is intoxicating from the start but somehow, it intensifies as the show goes on, as that clock continues to count down. In the midst of all this familial and electoral chaos, they find time for each other and as secrets of their pasts start to tumble out, of car accidents and violent first marriages, you still think there’s a way through this for them. Once the cat is finally out of the bag, the effect is all the more jarring for how close they have been, it is genuinely upsetting to see the full weight of the tragedy come to bear on them and rupture their world so irrevocably.
Hildegard Bechtler’s smooth set is cannily emptied as time goes on, they’re moving out as well as on you see, focusing our attention more and more on the inevitability of the truth coming crashing out. And between them, Icke and Sophocles make us realise that that is exactly what has to happen, fate won’t allow it any other way even if Strong and Manville give us blind hope that it might. An absolute must-see.
