Oedipus Rex Review

For all its gravitas, Belvoir Street Theatre’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex falls flat. It’s a strange Freudian interpretation of the Greek tragedy – it seems to draw more upon the 20th century philosopher and his ideas about regressing to childhood, about arrested development, than the source text itself. Perhaps it seems that way because King Oedipus (Peter Carroll, who is the sole reason for the aforementioned gravitas) in this modern adaptation is a frail old man playing Hide And Seek with his daughter Antigone (Andrea Demetriades), the progeny of Oedipus and his own mother, before memory – or is it madness – brings him back to ancient Thebes and his undoing. But it’s not a particularly inventive way to pull this Greek tragedy into the modern world, a world where psychoanalysts since have revised, criticised or even blatantly disregarded the so-called Oedipal complex. Then at the same time, and in the Greek theatre way, the play is rich in metaphor and symbolism, but that style seems to have been given precedence over the flesh and bones of the matter, used as a substitute for something substantial, something the audience can hold into. That means that the play meanders, drawn along by the skill and precision of Carroll. Carroll is the most impressive aspect of the play; he takes the role and brings it to the miserable present, his movements at times fluid and stylised, and at others, disjointed and desperate.

21 Aug — 21 Sep, Belvoir, Downstairs Theatre