Oedipus

On October 27th, the Warners took us to a production of Sophocles' Oedipus, starring Ralph Fiennes (Yeah, you know, Voldemort) as Oedipus. It was in the London National Theatre, and it was absolutely fantastic.

I don't know much about Greek Tragedy, and I'm going to assume you don't either, so I don't know how much of this is standard for a true-to-form Greek play, and how much of this is unusual, but the stage was a large, slightly raked circle, with only two set pieces-- a huge (like, 15 ft. tall huge) stone gate and a table. The doors of the gate would, in fact, open and close throughout the show as people needed to move in and out of the "palace" that the gate represented. Most interesting, though, was the fact that the entire stage would rotate. Thus, the gate did one full revolution around the stage as the play went on. But the table in the corner didn't move at all-- I'm not sure quite how they did it, but it was really neat.

Oedipus, for those of you who don't know, is an ancient Greek legend about a guy named Oedipus, whose parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes, hear a prophecy that their son will kill his father and marry and have children with his mother. They're obviously a bit scared of this, so they order one of their servants to go out and expose the child. (Exposing a child was actually a fairly common Greek practice in case of deformity or other problems. You took the baby out, left him or her on a mountain somewhere, and left. Yuck.)

The servant they entrust the child to, however, feels sorry for the baby and gives him to a passing shepherd, who takes him to the King and Queen of Corinth, who raise him as their own. Many years later, a passing comment from a drunk man makes Oedipus wonder if he is adopted-- he asks the Oracle, who tells him the same prophecy she told his real parents-- he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Terrified, he flees Corinth.

Well, guess where he goes-- straight to Thebes, where he meets a man on the road and kills him, and then rescues the city from the Sphinx. In return, the Thebans crown him king, and he marries the late king's wife. I think we can all see where this is going.

Many years later, the city of Thebes is suffering from plagues, famine, drought, and general unpleasantness, and it becomes apparent that this is because the man who killed the previous King has not yet been punished. Oedipus decides to seek him out, and realizes that not only is he the one who killed the King, but that the King was his father and his mother, Jocasta, is the woman to whom he is currently married, and with whom he has four children. Yuck. Jocasta kills herself in grief, and Oedipus gouges out his own eyes with some of her jewelry.

Yeah, it's a delightful play, full of hope. But anyway, Ralph Fiennes was absolutely brilliant as Oedipus, and the Chorus was fantastic-- they would actually sing snatches of their lines here and there, with these wonderful contrapuntal a cappella lines of music that really sounded quite eerie. My one complaint was that the actress playing Jocasta seemed to think that when agitated, all middle-aged women squeak and their voices crack, all the time, and this got a little hard to listen to, after a while. Even so, the show was absolutely fantastic.

So yeah.

--Bill