With a crack team of creatives on board and the starry Rami Malek and Indira Varma in the leading roles, it felt like the fates were on side for Matthew Warchus’ production of Oedipus at The Old Vic.
It’s a show which, unfortunately, comes hot on the heels of another, critically-acclaimed Oedipus in the West End (starring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville). Comparisons were going to be inevitable, but then this is a play that’s been performed for almost 2,500 years. So maybe The Old Vic’s production didn’t have to work quite so hard to be unique, with its stripped-back set, emotionally detached king, and – most controversially – a mute chorus who express themselves through dance.
Rami Malek’s cold, disconnected performance as the king in search of knowledge at all costs cuts an unsympathetic figure – though a good foil for Indira Varma’s fiercely pragmatic Jocasta, whose repeated calls for sensible action fall on deaf ears as the city of Thebes thirsts in an apocalyptic drought. They make for an oddly opposed couple, which serves the emerging moral of Ella Hickson’s adaptation – a cautionary tale warning against populist leaders, false prophets and frenzied groupthink – but not the crux of the tragedy of the original text.
Add in some jarring dashes of humour and a pretty major rewrite, and you can’t help feeling deprived of the full, epic scale of the tragedy. Foreshadowing is swept under the carpet by Rami Malek’s drawling delivery as he recalls (what turns out to be) a fateful night in his youth. Oedipus’ gruesome self-mutilation, a desperate expression of regret for the knowledge he pursued out of fear, takes place off-stage. Then, there’s the chorus, traditionally the driving mechanism for the plot, providing context and commentary to guide the audience in digesting the play’s moral questions. Reinstating the music and dance that would have shaped their roles on the ancient stage is an admirable move, but to silence them is to gut the play of its poetry and pathos – no matter how viscerally captivating the choreography by Hofesh Schechter.
Moving en masse, about a dozen dancers create writhing, twisting forms that seem to move on a plane where time passes at a different pace, sometimes coalescing into one vast, animal form, at others fracturing into lost individuals. There are echoes of folk dance, of prayer, of figures circling an Ancient Greek vase, and it’s absolutely gripping to watch. But the dance breaks are so independent of the narrative, so isolated, it feels like channel-hopping – and the show struggles to gather momentum as it builds to its inexorable conclusion.
Tom Visser’s relentless lighting blasts the barren set with an orange blaze as the sun sets on Oedipus’ golden reign, a vision of a desiccated wasteland ravaged by climate change. And as desperate citizens – and their leader – cling to the soothing words of the all-knowing Oracle, we’re reminded how fear and misinformation can drive people to unthinkable extremes. There is, clearly, plenty of modern resonance and meaning in this production.
It just could have done with more of the ancient, too.
NOTE: Oedipus plays at The Old Vic until 29th March 2025. Tickets start at £15 – you can book on The Old Vic website.
Oedipus | The Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB
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