Icke’s Broadway ‘Oedipus’ shines with Strong and Manville

It’s election night in Robert Icke’s “Oedipus,” a modern retelling of Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King” that must be the buzziest, if not the chicest, Broadway offering of the fall season. The production, a prestigious London import that opened at Studio 54 on Thursday under Icke’s smart and sleek direction, stars a charismatic Mark Strong in the title role. His elegant and urbane Oedipus, a politician on the cusp of a momentous victory, prides himself on not playing by the old rules. A straight talker who has made transparency his calling card, he frequently veers off script in paroxysms of candor, to the chagrin of Creon (John Carroll Lynch), his brother-in-law who has been steering the campaign to what looks like a landslide victory.

But “count no mortal happy till/ he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain,” as the chorus intones at the end of Sophocles’ tragedy. There is no chorus in Icke’s version, but the sentiment holds, as Oedipus unravels the puzzle of his identity with the same relentlessness that has brought him to the brink of electoral triumph.

A birther conspiracy has been raised by his political opponent, and Oedipus, speaking impromptu to reporters on-screen at the start of the play, promises to release his birth certificate and put an end to the controversy. What’s more, he vows to reopen an investigation into the death of Laius, the former leader who died 34 years ago under circumstances that have allowed rumor and innuendo to fester.

Oedipus calls himself Laius’ “successor, the inheritor of his legacy,” and in true Sophoclean fashion he speaks more than he knows. Jocasta (Lesley Manville in top form), Oedipus’ wife, was married to Laius, and so Oedipus is occupying his predecessor’s place in more ways than one.

In Sophocles’ play, Oedipus confronts a plague that has been laying waste to Thebes. In Icke’s drama, which had its premiere in Amsterdam in 2018, the pathogen is political. The civic body has fallen ill. Oedipus sees himself as an answer to the demagogic manipulation that has wrought havoc. The water is poisoned, economic inequality is out of control and immigrants have become an easy target. Sound familiar?

Icke’s Oedipus has an Obama-level of confidence in reason and reasonableness. His direct, pragmatic approach has seduced voters, but has it deluded him into thinking that he has all the answers? Oedipus is an ingenious problem solver. Puzzles entice his keen intellect, but he will have to learn the difference between a paradox and a riddle.

His daughter, Antigone (Olivia Reis), a scholar who has returned for her father’s big night, ventures to make the distinction: “One’s got a solution — one’s just something you have to live with?” But Oedipus is in no mood for academic hairsplitting. A countdown clock marks the time until the election results will be announced. That hour, as audiences familiar with the original tragedy already know, is when Oedipus will discover his true identity. Merope (Anne Reid), Oedipus’ mother, has unexpectedly turned up at campaign headquarters needing to speak to her son. Oedipus fears it has something to do with his dying father, but she tells him she just needs a few minutes alone with him. Thinking he has everything under control, he keeps putting her off, not knowing that she has come to warn him about revealing his birth certificate to the public.

The handling of this plot device, with the canny veteran Reid wandering in and out of the drama like an informational time bomb, is a little clumsy. There’s a prattling aspect to Icke’s delaying tactics. His “Oedipus” is more prose than poetry. The family dynamics are well drawn, though a tad overdone.

Reid’s Merope and Reis’ Antigone, ferocious in their different ways, refuse to play second fiddle to Manville’s Jocasta when it comes to Oedipus’ affections. Manville, who won an Olivier Award for her performance in “Oedipus,” delivers a performance as sublimely seething as her Oscar-nominated turn in “Phantom Thread.”

Tribune News Service