King’s
Theatre
Four
stars
“We’re
going to make some history tonight, I think,” says the popular political leader
to his first lady in waiting as he awaits the result of an epoch-changing
election in Robert Icke’s radical reworking of Sophocles’ Greek classic.
Opening with a TV news mock-up of Oedipus on the street promising the world to
the cameras, Icke sets out his store in a slick and straight-lined open-plan
office that is Oedipus’ campaign base. Here he comes to let off steam, dress
down and catch up with his wife Jocasta and his kids away from the crowds. If
Europe is lost, Oedipus is its off-message saviour from everything that is
sick. Or he would be if he manages to save himself from his own past.
With flat-screen
TV monitors relaying a rolling news feed, and an LED clock counting down the
play’s just shy of two-hour duration on Hildegard Bechtler’s set, Icke has
created a slow-burning peek into the very private world of public figures,
which pokes, prods and picks at the sore of every unwitting indiscretion. Aus
Greidanus Jr’s Creon is a spin-doctor on the make, Oedipus’ two boys Polynices
and Eteocles are discovering who they are, and his daughter Antigone is finding
her own way of doing things.
At
the self-destructive heart of Icke’s Internationaal Theater Amsterdam production
are Hans Kesting and Marieke Hebink’s towering performances as the doomed
couple whose attempt to do good are thwarted by the trickledown effects of
their respective pasts. There are hints of this aplenty in the dinner table
banter between the family even before Creon attempts to firefight the things
that brought the couple together. Where he was a hit and run joyrider, she is
the survivor of an abusive relationship.
Performed
in Dutch with English surtitles, Icke’s take on things focuses too on Oedipus’
lack of foresight through a vanity-driven unwillingness to wear glasses and
square up to what’s directly in front of him. If such personal turmoil probably
wouldn’t exclude him from public office just now, as the office is stripped
increasingly bare, it reveals an Oedipus very much for today.
The Herald, August 15th 2019
ends
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