The Olivier was built to stage productions like these. Jonathan Kent’s dark revival is dominated by men in suits with Ralph Fiennes as the chief executive who is determined to purge the business of toxic debts. And he’s the man for the job, as he tells the chorus, a solidly male, elderly bunch who, in between individual utterances, burst into liturgic-like song. The combination of song and speech is a remarkable innovation and for once the chorus aren’t the usual embarrassment.
With the hubris of Oedipus, Kent throws down a challenge to the audience, defying it to laugh despite the operatic pitch at which the play is performed. When it works, as it largely does here, the result is electrifying, but just occasionally he goes too far as in Oedipus’s amplified off-stage scream and in the appearance of four sobbing young children right at the end. In contrast, it’s the simple humanity of Alfred Burke’s Shepherd that moves. Working as usual with Paul Brown, Kent has set the action on a mottled dome, which imperceptibly revolves and is dominated by a vast doorway, behind which panels fly open to reveal increasingly decaying trees reminiscent of ‘Waiting for Godot’. The Beckettian connection is reinforced when Alan Howard’s delicate, blind Teiresias gropes his way on stage attached to a boy on a rope.
The strength of Frank McGuinness’s version lies in its emphasis on the idea that if Apollo’s prophecy has not been fulfilled then man will be free to shake off the bonds of fate. For one brief moment Oedipus and Jocasta glimpse such a future before they are brought down by the forces of conservatism and it is the bureaucratic Creon (Jasper Britton) who triumphs. Fiennes is all boring bluster at the start, but when he finally realises – and he’s way behind everyone else – the enormity of what he has done, the actor finds a freedom of expression that digs deep into the soul.
I, sadly, don't agree with your positive reviewer. It was an irritating Oedipus who constantly hitched at his waistband. There was no sense of his greatness in the first act. Yes, his fall was magnificently portrayed: that long drawn out howl of anguish still echoes. But it was badly counterbalanced with the over theatricality of swamps of blood from his hands being passed onto all those he touched after blinding himself. I DID find the chorus intriguing but the move from voice to song was unconvincing and,therefore, made the besuited figures somewhat anachronistic: which is what Oedipus seemed. Perhaps it was his age (Fienne' I mean who seemed older in this play than anything before). It just didn't work that he and his wife had such a disparity. I love Oedipus and I love Fiennes but I didn't love this production
,rail
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I, sadly, don't agree with your positive reviewer. It was an irritating Oedipus who constantly hitched at his waistband. There was no sense of his greatness in the first act. Yes, his fall was magnificently portrayed: that long drawn out howl of anguish still echoes. But it was badly counterbalanced with the over theatricality of swamps of blood from his hands being passed onto all those he touched after blinding himself. I DID find the chorus intriguing but the move from voice to song was unconvincing and,therefore, made the besuited figures somewhat anachronistic: which is what Oedipus seemed. Perhaps it was his age (Fienne' I mean who seemed older in this play than anything before). It just didn't work that he and his wife had such a disparity. I love Oedipus and I love Fiennes but I didn't love this production