In the corner of the wide white anonymous modern room that comprises the set of Robert Icke’s free adaptation of Oedipus Rex, a digital clock ticks down the seconds to zero. It’s a trick Icke used to queasily tense effect in his 2015 version of The Oresteia, in which the trial of Orestes played out in real time. This time, in a glitzy production featuring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville as the star-crossed lovers, the blood-red digits count down to the results of an election, which Strong’s Oedipus, a smooth talking, Obama-lite style politician, is virtually guaranteed to win by a landslide: a moment the family know will change his life for ever. Yet time also has another role in this most unyielding of Greek tragedies, which moves inexorably towards a moment of entirely different, inescapable revelation, and as a result of which the unwitting Oedipus will realise that his commitment to transparency has cost him everything he knows.
Icke plays with ironic parallel meanings throughout this slick, somewhat anodyne reimagining, first seen with a different cast at Edinburgh in 2019, and which refashions the story of Oedipus’s blindness to the truth of his origins – that he has married his mother and murdered his father – into a modern political parable. Among an expanded cast, a stand out addition includes the character of Oedipus’s “mother” Merope, who, in one of the production’s many wink wink jokes to the audience, keeps muttering about “inappropriate” behaviour whenever her grandchildren joke about sex, and who is played with terrific steely heart by the fabulous June Watson.
Yet all eyes are on Manville and Strong – the epitome of principled reason in metrosexual merino and trainers – who as the blissfully married power couple are so frisky they engage in a spot of cunnilingus under the table in their campaign HQ and disappear off for quickies, much to the frustration of Oedipus’s weirdly slippery campaign manager Creon (Michael Gould). It’s both of today, and disconcertingly not – Oedipus is first seen in filmed footage surrounded by placard-waving supporters; there is talk of birther certificates – yet also, there are no mobile phones. When Oedipus’s assistant updates him on the exit polls, she hands him a piece of paper.
Yet Oedipus the play ought to grip with sickening implacability from the moment Oedipus the man becomes determined to uncover the truth of his predecessor Laius’s death out of a stubbornly virtuous faith in the sanctity of honesty at all costs. For all the clock’s doomy marking down, this production fails to exert that grip for lengthy periods of time. The liberal use of ironic foreshadowing in the dialogue – references to mothers, knowledge and the like abound – come across as more of a knowing comic device than a horrifying tragic one. Icke is usually excellent at sustaining tension through the electric space he generates between his actors; here, that space feels slack. The dialogue is sometimes flabby; there is an unnecessary intrusive coda. There is also the sense that plenty here – the pointedly affectionate family scenes, the use of video footage, yes, that clock – are all things Icke has done before.
Yet Strong and Manville are desperately moving in the extraordinary final scenes, which play out as the most unbearable of love stories. Strong, who earlier combined a bumptious affability with a hint of arrogant presumption, can’t but listen in dreadful stillness, while Manville, whose Jocasta has radiated a flinty vitality – is agonising. But too little too late? On balance, yes.
Until Jan 4; oedipustheplay.com