“Oedipus,” currently playing at Studio 54, is set on an election night, just as the polls are about to close and the results of the vote are to be announced. While the characters expect to celebrate a landslide victory, the audience dreads the inevitable. Even though the whole play takes place at a campaign office, it’s still a retelling of Sophecles’ ancient tragedy about a king’s miserablemiserable fate to kill his father and marry his mother.
This inspired adaptation of the classic drama, presented as a contemporary political thriller, is the brainchild of director-playwright Robert Icke, who made his Broadway debut with a similarly visceral “1984” adaptation in 2017 and is readying a “Romeo & Juliet” for the West End in the spring. The production is playing a limited engagement at Studio 54 through Feb. 8, with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville reprising their roles from the Olivier Award-winning West End run.
Icke spoke with Broadway News about approaching old texts with new takes, incorporating a Greek chorus into a modern staging and conceiving that onstage countdown clock.
This interview — which does include spoilers — has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Broadway News: You debuted this “Oedipus” in Amsterdam in 2018. How did you come to set it on election night?
Robert Icke: It began with a question: Why do we call this play “Oedipus Rex” when Rex is a Latin word, and obviously, Oedipus is Greek? The actual title is “Oedipus Tyrannus,” and a “tyrant” for Classical Athens was not a bad guy who takes over your country, but a somebody who is chosen by the crowd. How do you make him The Chosen One? You have him elected.
The other ingredient in that soup was, when … Hillary [Clinton] didn’t leave the hotel suite for a while [during the 2016 Presidential election]. All the advisors and chiefs were trapped in their hotel suites, waiting to accept or concede, and if anyone even came out to get cigarettes, there’d be loads of photographs. It struck me that this setup would allow for a real-time play where very powerful people can't leave a room, and it wouldn’t feel like a wild stretch.
The concept is brilliant and, now that you’ve explained your thinking, obvious.
Icke: That’s always what I’m trying to get. Like, if you go, “Ah, well, of course it’s this,” that’s when it’s working, and then [the characters] just feel like they're alive. I think it's at its worst when it feels strenuous or needy — like, “Look, Mom! Look how relevant this is!” — which there’s a lot of. It's really easy to do. We’ve all fallen into that trap.
The show opens with a filmed sequence: Oedipus greets the public and speaks to news cameras, vowing to identify Laius’ killer and release his own birth certificate. Tell me about filming that footage.
