Oedipus review - "visually arresting but it is lacking in dramatic heft"
Our reviewer says there's nothing kingly about Rami Malek in his UK stage debut at the Old Vic.
Image credit: Manuel Harlan
Our reviewer says there's nothing kingly about Rami Malek in his UK stage debut at the Old Vic.
You wait for one Oedipus to come along, then you get two in quick succession. The curtain has barely come down on the startling reimagining by Robert Icke and now we have Ella Hickson's take on the Greek tragedy.
Playing at the Wyndham's Theatre, Icke's redo was a thriller starring Mark Strong as a modern-day politician and Lesley Manville as his wife and also his... well, for theatregoers unfamiliar with the true meaning of an Oedipus complex and who are coming to the Old Vic's version without prior knowledge, let's just say the Sophocles story features a shocking twist.
Or rather it should. With Strong and Manville firing on all cylinders, the Wyndham's production ratcheted up the tension to an unbearable degree, then ended on such a despairing note that it left me stirred, shaken and in need of a stiff drink.
The Old Vic production is visually arresting but it is lacking in dramatic heft, so when tragedy strikes it is curiously unmoving.
A lot of the fault for that can be laid at the feet of Rami Malek, making his UK stage debut as the Greek King of drought-ridden Thebes, whose past and present turn out to be so dark and disturbing that he literally blinds himself to the horrors of the world.
With his slight frame, strangely alien body language and weird mid-sentence pauses, there's nothing kingly about Malek and, one violent outburst aside, the Mr Robot actor is robotic and wooden.
There's also no heat between him and Indira Varma, who in her bright orange dress is as vivid as presence as he in his drab grey suit is a blank.
Co-directors Matthew Warchus and Hofesh Shechter seem more concerned with the look of the piece - and it looks fantastic. The setting is a stark past that, with more bright orange in the simulated sunlight, also has the feel of a dystopian Dune future.
The imagery sears its way into your brain and the soundscapes by Christopher Shutt swirl around the theatre, fully emerging the audience in its aural aura.
Best of all is the astonishingly dextrous group of dancers who function as the Greek chorus, moving to Shechter's beat-heavy music like attendees at an ancient rave. It's not always clear what their movements are meant to signify, but when they let loose in the rain that finally graces Thebes they're an entrancing sight.
That said, they are overused, with routines that break up the story far too often and seem to go on forever, and the volume is pumped up so high that a saga which should leave you with chills is more likely to give you a headache.
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