A thrilling love story shattered by human fallibility

★★★★★

Lesley Manville and Mark Strong in Oedipus. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I love going to the theatre but I can’t deny that, while they offer the excitement of live performance, many evenings are transitory experiences- good at the time but not that memorable. Then, a production comes along that reminds you why you fell in love with theatre, and why at its best it’s a transcendent experience. A thrilling production like Robert Icke’s Oedipus, adapted from Sophocles‘ Ancient Greek tragedy and starring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. For two hours, you are not only in the presence of two great actors, you are taken out of the here and now, into a timeless story of human experience.

First, we should pay tribute to Sophocles born over 2500 years ago and possibly the greatest playwright of all time. He wrote around 120 plays. Of the seven that survive, Oedipus, or Oedipus The King, is considered to be his finest. Sophocles provides the core of this production by showing the way Oedipus reacts to being the victim of a situation he only inadvertently caused.

Now, it will come as no surprise to you that the situation is, unbeknownst to him, he has killed his father and married his mother. And, if we didn’t know, we soon do because early on in the play, he meets someone who can foresee the future- Tiresias played by Samuel Brewer as someone frightened by his knowledge and reluctant to impart it. Oedipus, the truth seeker, insists so Tiesias tells him he will discover that he is the killer of his father and the lover of his mother. He laughs it off. After all, his father is still alive and his elderly mother is certainly not his wife.

In Robert Icke‘s interpretation, Oedipus is a modern day politican who, Obama-like, promises to be truthful and transparent- and means it. We meet him on election night, and await his almost certain victory in real time, as a clock counts down the seconds to the result. This is unbearably tense because the time is just a little less than the length of the play, which is without an interval, and which we are pretty sure will end badly

At the very start, Oedipus makes two rash decisions (rash in his advisor’s opinion). As there are doubts about his immigrant origins, he will release his birth certificate. Secondly, because there are rumours about how the last proper ruler King Laius, who was also his wife’s former husband, died 30 years earlier, he will conduct a public investigation. But sometimes the truth can be devastating and his well-intentioned decisions set off the inevitable conclusion.

Robert Icke’s Oedipus at the Wyndham’s Theatre

Everything takes place in one indoor location, the election campaign headquarters. As well as a workplace, it is also the place where Oedipus’ family live. Hildegard Bechtler‘s clean, shiny, white set suggests both a modern office and the temporariness of life, which is an on-going theme of the play. As time ticks away, so the furnishings are gradually removed.

Oedipus’ mother Merope has something important to tell him. We suspect what this will be, but he keeps putting her off. She is played by June Watson as a world-weary but steely old woman. Meanwhile, we get hints of political intrigue when we meet Oedipus’ close advisor Creon, his brother-in-law, played with a certain shiftiness and exasperation by Michael Gould. Oedipus doesn’t trust him, partly because Tiresias has predicted Creon will become leader, and partly because, unlike him, Creon sees the potential dangers of transparency.

Heart bursting drama

Most importantly, we meet Oedipus’ wife, Jocasta, a little older than him, and whom he clearly loves. The passion is still strong even after thirty years: he gives her oral sex on stage and, when interrupted, they go off for a quickie. It’s a love that dominates the play. ‘Love,’ he proclaims, ‘is the only thing that matters in the end’. Like their characters, Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are a match made in heaven: they’re tactile, warm, honest, and at ease with each other. You can feel the erotic charge. Your heart bursts with the knowledge of what is to come, knowledge that will shatter their love story.

Then, there’s the loving family. They may bicker but they are relaxed together. Some of the audience may know that in other plays by Sophocles, the consequences of tonight will play out in further tragedy, including Antigone, which features his daughter, and is currently playing in a hardly recognisable modern version called The Other Place at the National Theatre. It seems we can’t get enough of Sophocles. There’s even another version of Oedipus coming to the Old Vic next year, featuring Rami Malek and Indira Varma.

They will have to do incredibly well to match Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. When they are on stage, you feel you are in the presence of greatness. Mark Strong carries himself with the confidence, strength and arrogance of a leader, upright with jutting jaw, but he is also able to show a full range of emotions from fear to temper to tenderness. Lesley Manville is a sparkling foil to him. She laughs, she’s seductive, she’s protective, she tries to persuade him to leave well alone. When she talks of becoming pregnant at 13 and having the baby taken away, it’s a pin-drop moment of the deepest emotion, and made all the worse because we know who that baby is.

The tension is palpable as Oedipus’ determination to discover and reveal the truth leads him first to connect an accident he was involved in as a young man with the death of his wife’s despicable husband King Laius, and then to the much worse truth about his own origins.

Yes, the coincidences are a bit much, both in Sophocles‘ original and in Robert Icke‘s adaptation, but the ticking clock allows us no time to question the plot. We may not be cursed by the Ancient Greek Gods, but this play tells us we are all trapped by circumstances beyond our control from birth to death. We realise that Oedipus’ tragedy is not that he unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, it’s that his only too human quest for answers, without thought to the consequences of that knowledge, leads him to find out a shocking truth about himself. In a heartbreaking scene, we’re even reminded how different it could have been if he had made other choices.

It all comes back to being human, which I think is at the heart of theatre because of its human scale. There is a scene between Creon and Antigone in which they discuss a riddle, that is in fact the Riddle of The Sphinx, the one which made Oedipus a hero when he solved it. The answer to the riddle is, significantly, a human being.

As Oedipus’ mother says, ‘It was a struggle to get here. A struggle to be here. What can it be but a struggle to leave.’ Sophocles recognised the nature of the human condition, and Robert Icke, as adaptor and director, has laid it out again for us, magnificently.

Oedipus is at the Wyndham’s Theatre until 4 January 2025. Buy tickets direct from the theatre.

Paul bought his own ticket.

Click here to watch this review on our YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

Click here to read a roundup of critics’ reviews of Oedipus

Juliet Stevenson outstanding in Robert Icke’s exposure of populism

★★★

Production photo of Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre London — Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Dr Wolfe, played by Juliet Stevenson, prides herself on being logical and making medical decisions based on facts in a world of irrationality.

Hildegard Bechtler’s stark set is quite a contrast to the detailed oppressiveness of her design for Rosmersholm. Here you have bare pale walls with only a table and benches in the middle, very clinical and hospital-like but also reflecting the cool rationality of the main protagonist.

On this occasion she’s treating a 14 year old girl who has botched a self administered abortion and contracted sepsis. She’s going to die and Dr Wolfe wants her to die peacefully. A Catholic priest turns up expecting to give her the last rites but the doctor doesn’t want her patient disturbed.

Thenceforth this sparkler of an incident turns into a stick of dynamite as the doctor is attacked on all sides: by her colleagues who want her power reduced, by campaigners who seize an opportunity for publicity, by internet trolls who want to vent their anger.

Production photo showing the cast of The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre in London — The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan

An online petition condemning her gains tens of thousands of signatures from people who know nothing of the case. An anti-abortionist attacks her even though she didn’t carry out an abortion. People abuse her and accuse her of murder. Her Jewish parentage is invoked as a reason for her anti-Catholic behaviour.

Much of the play is about a rational person trying to maintain her position while being besieged by irrational, prejudiced people with their own agendas.

Robert Icke’s clever use of gender and colour blind casting

Writer and director Robert Icke cleverly uses gender and colour blind casting to wrong foot the audience. We don’t see why the doctor should be accused of prejudice until we realise that someone we thought was white was black or someone we saw as a woman is a man, thus underlining that it is the accusers who are prejudiced.

The doctor is drawn into defending herself and, under pressure, she reveals some prejudice in her own behaviour which leads to irrationality, but in unexpected ways.

Take language. Her pride in her rationality is illustrated by her obsession with the correct use of English. She picks someone up for saying ‘literally’ in a context where it means precisely the opposite. Later she is forced to acknowledge that language is fluid and subjective, when her enemies pick on a seemingly innocuous phrase as being racist because she used it against a black person.

She also freely admits that her practice of medicine is only the sum of today’s knowledge and could be seen as ignorant and like witchcraft in the future.

The original play on which The Doctor is based is Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler. Written a hundred years ago it was a warning against the rise of populism and its use of people’s prejudices as a weapon. These days the tools may be different- social media and TV- but Robert Icke’s new version suggests the tactics of populists remain the same.

Juliet Stevenson gives a five star performance

The Doctor shows how frighteningly easy it is for the rational can be submerged by the irrational. Our protagonist gradually breaks down as she is engulfed by a nightmare. Juliet Stevenson gives a five star performance as she descends from the ramrod stiff leader at the opening through anger to desolation and tears.

The problem for me was that the plot seemed contrived. I didn’t believe that events would turn out this way. Would a senior doctor in dementia take on someone with sepsis from A&E? Would a TV debate really include an anti-abortionist when abortion was not the issue? Add to which, the other characters seemed like ciphers there simply to make a point.

Production photo of Ria Zmitrowicz and Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre in London — Ria Zmitrowicz and Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor. Photo: Manuel Harlanliet

The exception was the troubled young person staying with Dr Wolff and who has her private life exposed. only the other week The Sun published a repugnant story which used the name of famous cricketer Ben Stokes as an excuse to write about his parents and a family tragedy that happened before he was even born. Ria Zmitrowicz was convincingly nervous and vulnerable as she placed her trust in her substitute mother.

A lack of respect for his audience?

I was disappointed in one element of Robert Icke’s direction. There is a point where Juliet Stevenson sits on the front of the stage and has an important confrontation with another character. This was not visible from the Circle where I was sitting. I have worked in a 2000 seat theatre where the directors would go to the back and sides of each of the three levels to ensure that the actors could be seen. It would be surprising if, in a theatre as small as the Almeida with 360 seats and two levels, Mr Icke was unaware that hundreds of ticket buyers would be unable to see this crucial moment.

Remembering the theme of this play, I will admit that I don’t know all the circumstances and I’m not a director. Nevertheless I find it difficult to believe he couldn’t have moved this scene upstage a little. I’m not going to start a Facebook petition or a Twitter campaign but he does appear to be showing a lack of respect for his audience.

Robert Icke is a hugely talented director and while his final production as associate director of the Alemeida Theatre may not be his best, The Doctor is an imaginative, thought provoking work that generates a powerful performance by one of our finest actors.

The Doctor is performing at the Almeida Theatre until 28 September 2019 before transferring to the Duke Of York’s Theatre for a limited run from 20 April 2020.

Click here to watch the YouTube review of The Doctor starring Juliet Stevenson

Tag: robert icke

Review: Oedipus with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville at Wyndham’s Theatre