Review Roundup: Did Mark Strong and Lesley Manville Dazzle in OEDIPUS?

Starring the internationally renowned, multi award-winning Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, Sophocles’ epic tragedy is transformed into an essential, explosive human thriller.

After his revelatory Oresteia, visionary director Robert Icke reimagines another Ancient Greek tragedy, bringing the secrets of the past bursting into the present.

Following hit runs at Internationaal Theatre Amsterdam and the Edinburgh Festival, Oedipus comes to Wyndham’s Theatre for a strictly limited run from 4 October.

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan

Cindy Marcolina, BroadwayWorld: This Oedipus lives between the lines of family drama and tragic historical-fiction, an intertemporal adaptation that strongly echoes the discussions that preceded the Obama administration and that keep popping up in right-wing circles. You come out of it positively stunned: the unbroken running time heightens the pacing, turning the piece into a breathless marathon towards an inevitable, gory finale worthy of any noble Greek tragedy.

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: The production is astonishing for all the moments when it rests in the affection between Jocasta and Oedipus, whose physical longing for one another is shown very explicitly, or Oedipus for Watson’s Merope who tells him he is adopted in a voice thick with emotion and longing, making every word count. It is also notable for its stillness; all the activity of the early scenes, the playfights and the rushing, ultimately resolve into stark passages where Strong sits or stands, simply listening.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: A stop-clock counts the hours and minutes to the election results but also marks the inevitable forward movement to terrible self-knowledge. Foreshadowing is tucked into family exchanges, perhaps a little heavy-handedly: when one son playfully covers Oedipus’s eyes, he jokes about being blinded in a fleeting reference to the gouging of his eyes at the end. “Did you cook this, Mum?” he asks at the dining table, and it is his wife who answers (later turning out to be his mother).

Nick Curtis, The Standard: Strong has superb pacing and physical awareness, his lithe, shaven-headed form switching from loose daddish warmth to vulpine alertness and stricken anguish in a heartbeat. And surely there is no finer actress working today than Manville, who’s excelled at the Royal Court, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, and conquered Hollywood (The Phantom Thread), British sitcom (Mum) and lockdown binge-watch (Sherwood).

Olivia Rook, London Theatre: Lesley Manville delivers an astonishing performance as Jocasta in this lean and pacy production, which reframes Sophocles’ story of incest, power, and ignorance within the context of a political contest. It is election night and Oedipus is on the brink of claiming victory, prematurely toasting his success with his wife Jocasta, their three children, and brother-in-law and advisor Creon (a calculating and slightly unsettling Michael Gould). As they await the results of his sure-fire win, devastating revelations about Oedipus’s true parentage surface, with repercussions for both his family and the country.

Clive Davis, The Times: Perhaps because we’ve seen the approach copied so often in recent years — the opening video sequence where Strong, addressing the media in the street, comes across as a fusion of Blair and Obama, looks decidedly contrived. And the moment when an overheated Oedipus and Jocasta try to have a quick bout of sex behind the backs of family and aides results in some cheesy “baby, baby” soft porn groaning.

Average Rating: 80.0%