Review: Mark Strong and Lesley Manville Captivate as a Dysfunctional Power Couple in Oedipus

An ominous countdown clock ticks away the seconds in Robert Icke’s Oedipus. In this thrilling adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy, it becomes less a clock and more the timer on a bomb (Tom Gibbons’s sound design adds to that impression). Though Icke has used clocks in some of his other updates of classics like the Oresteia, the effect here is visceral. Even if you think you know how this play ends, you’ll find yourself inching forward in anticipation as the digits approach zero.

That’s because this production, which Icke also directs, has more going for it than a suspenseful timepiece. Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, giving two of this year’s great performances, lead a brilliant cast that turns this millennia-old story of pride and familial dysfunction into a timely political thriller that resonates with uncomfortable questions.

The scene is a campaign office where populist politician Oedipus (Strong) and his family await election-night results (Hildegard Bechtler’s busy set is a fun house of pivot doors and hiding places). He looks like a shoo-in, even though there have been calls for him to produce a birth certificate to prove his eligibility. Not to worry, he says, his life is an open book. Oedipus’s wife, Jocasta (Manville), a dozen years his senior, isn’t so sure.

Then, in comes a meddlesome prophet, Teiresias (Samuel Brewer), stirring things up with tedious riddles and vexing forecasts of doom. Suddenly, questions are being asked by his brother-in-law, Creon (a stellar John Carroll Lynch) about an accident that happened years ago when the former ruler, Laius, was killed in an auto accident. Might Laius’s driver (Teagle F. Bougere) somehow implicate Oedipus in the death? Jocasta thinks all these inquiries are irrelevant—the past should be left in the past. But, as if propelled by fate, Oedipus continues to ask questions, and with each answer he comes closer to a blinding revelation.

You can interpret the play’s political implications and analogs anyway you like (have fun with that). What’s more important is that Icke has taken a story this old and made it feel fresh. Intact are the original names (with a couple of new characters) and the essence of Sophocles’ intent, even though some of the scenes might now seem far-fetched (how did that blind prophet get past security anyway?).

But Icke updates the plot and dialogue to bring things into the present (Wojciech Dziedzic has aptly costumed the cast in modern politico drag). The play begins with a pre-recorded video (designed by Tal Yarden) depicting Oedipus rallying a crowd of supporters, and later he chides his gay son, Polyneices (James Wilbraham), for hiding his homosexuality. Obviously, these are scenes Sophocles never imagined, but they effectively make the point that for Oedipus, the truth will become a double-edged sword—or in this version, something more haute couture.

Strong is extraordinary as he shuttles back and forth between the poles of Oedipus’s mercurial nature, making you loathe him one minute for his overweening pride and arrogance, and admire him the next as he plumbs the depths of his past. He’s a cocky bastard with his family, accusing Creon of backstabbing him, and his daughter, Antigone (Olivia Reis, mesmerizing), of being too smart for her own good. But his face softens into the pained submission of a flagellant when he learns who Jocasta really is.

He’s backed up by a terrific supporting cast, including Jordan Scowen as Oedipus’s son Eteocles, Ani Mesa-Perez as Lichas, and an endearing Bhasker Patel as Corin. Special mention must go to Anne Reid as Oedipus’s foster mother, Merope. She transfixes our gaze every moment she’s onstage, delivering the elderly woman’s world-weary wisdom with grandeur, severity, and hard-boiled eloquence.

But the show goes to Manville, who crushes us with an extraordinary performance as Oedipus’s aggressively truth-defying wife—and in the process makes a case for this play being renamed Jocasta. Whether in her delivery of a harrowing backstory or her positively cringey sex scenes with Strong (Natasha Chivers unabashed lighting makes these moments seem even more brazen), Manville towers above the stage in an unforgettable turn.

Icke’s pacing in this two-hour play is not always as brisk as one might like. There is no intermission, so, I will admit, I found myself now and then looking at the red numbers of the clock in anticipation of a bathroom break that would never come. But in the end, Icke succeeds in bringing this Oedipus to a terrifying and distinctively new conclusion while raising a confounding question: Is it better to know your true self and be miserable, or to live and die happily in a lie? Now there’s something to mull on the throne.