Oedipus is famous for his ability to solve riddles. I’m in need of an Oedipus to solve the riddle of this production.
The creative team (Ella Hickson has written the adaptation, Matthew Warchus and the choreographer Hofesh Shechter co-direct) has set the play in an undefined time—post-apocalyptic, or post-climate catastrophe. The plague afflicting Thebes is now a drought and a harsh sun shines over a largely empty stage. Jocasta tries to convince Oedipus to abandon Thebes for a less drought-stricken area. Technology has taken a step back: the oracle’s pronouncements are delivered via an old reel-to-reel tape recorder!
So far so good. But what might one do with the Greek chorus in such a concept? The solution chosen here is to eliminate the text of the choruses entirely and bring in Shechter’s dance company to “comment” via dance on the action.
On one level I understand the choice. Shechter’s dance style brings a raw energy, powerfully rhythmic, to the play. But it also unbalances the story, which needs more language to bring across the conflict between Oedipus’s pride and the more traditional piety of the Theban elders. We don’t see how the chorus develops in understanding through the play, both because we’re missing Sophocles’ language and because there’s a kind of sameness about the dance.
Ironically, what I most missed in the omission of the choral texts was the despair the chorus expresses when it perceives that the royal house is rejecting divine authority. If men can act with impunity, if injustice is never punished, the chorus demands “Why should I dance?”
It’s a remarkable question, one that connects the sacred dance to the health of the polity. I would love to see a production that explores how this question underlies the tragedy. Of course, no director needs to create the play I want to see. But if the chorus is going to play such a prominent role, I want to feel that it enriches the play. Strong as the dance company is, I don’t feel it enlarged my feelings or my understanding of the performance as a whole.
We could do without the chorus and its struggle with the conflicts of the play if we found the hero sufficiently compelling. But here, Rami Malek’s Oedipus is the play’s greatest puzzle. There is nothing in his performance—indeed in the writing of this adaptation—that suggests to us he is the intelligent, arrogant leader who will stop at nothing to solve the mystery of King Laius’s murder. In fact, he’s less like Sophocles’ hero than he is like Malek’s Elliot from Mr. Robot: clinically depressed and barely able to take action. This all makes a hash of the ending. How can this hero’s horrible downfall inspire in us pity and terror?
Jocasta’s fate is also a puzzle. Rather than entering the palace and hanging herself after learning the dreadful news that she has married her own son, she slinks away from the city. Creon will later announce her death to the citizens, but is he lying to them to deflect their anger at his sister? (This all feels a bit too much like the kind of desperate argument I might have seized on at 2:00 am before a paper on Oedipus was due: Jocasta didn’t really kill herself!)
Hickson has given Jocasta a more prominent role in the play and, as played by the always superb Indira Varma, she dominates the stage. Sadly, she has little to work with in her scenes with Malek. His passivity constantly disrupts the forward momentum of the play, which makes me wonder: in what way is this even a play about Oedipus, the man who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth?
Can anyone solve for me the riddle of what is going on with this production? Clearly, Rami Malek’s Oedipus is not the man to unravel it.
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