By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Friday 25 January 2025, opening 4 February and running through 29 March 2025 RUNTIME: 105 minutes (no interval)

There’s so much to rave about in this razor-sharp adaptation of this Greek tragedy containing a 1st stage performance in 18 years by Oscar winner Rami Malek (film Bohemian Rhapsody) but it’s too often left flatfooted by pointless techno dance breaks.

• Read on for reasons including how from our row 5 seat we can see Malek’s eyes sparkle in the lights as they glaze with tears

You wait years for a version of Sophocles’ classic about a ruler hell-bent on discovering the truth about his background whatever the cost and, like giant red double-decker buses, 2 arrive almost simultaneously in London’s West End.

Robert Icke’s present-day Oedipus starring Mark Strong closed at the Wyndham’s Theatre this month and we said of it: ‘The clock, in particular, heightened the tension in Oresteia but here serves as a needless distraction as we were hoping for a more laser-like focus on the central story as Strong gives us everything to try to root the production in that space.’

Ella Hickson’s (The Writer, Almeida Theatre) adaptation at the Old Vic is everything we wanted in terms of an edit and distils the drama much better than Icke’s attempt to dress it up as present-day US presidential election night soap.

Co-director Matthew Warchus (Groundhog Day, Old Vic) captures the action cinematically on a stage bare for much of the action lit up occasionally by a striking, sun-kissed orange to convey a timeless, almost Dune-like world short of water with its people revolting against a leader struggling to convince them how to respond.

His decision to rely on fate and place both his and his people’s future against the wishes of his wife Jocasta, given life and greater agency by the brilliant Indira Varma (The Seagull, Harold Pinter Theatre), in the hands of an oracle portrayed as a disembodied voice on an infuriating 60s reel-to-reel tape deck is actual genius.

Cecilia Noble (The Welkin, National Theatre) is terrific as the expert summoned by Oedipus, Malek so good that even from our row 5 seat we can see his eyes sparkle in the lights as they glaze with tears at 1 point, who casts doubt upon everything he thinks he knows about his father’s death and his own tragic backstory.

And yet every 15 minutes or so there is a needless brief yet overlong techno dance break which adds nothing to the story and immediately sucks you out of what is happening.

In pop arena tours it is a trick used to cover an artist break or costume change and Warchus says in the programme: ‘I’ve directed quite a few musicals, so I’m used to this structure – the musical numbers act as turbo engines to generate a wave of power and emotions.’

It’s quite the experimental genre collision and here leaves the audience stifling giggles when so much sterling work has been done in every other department to produce an Oedipus which would have benefitted so much by casting out the pointless techno dance breaks it is too often saddled with.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Old Vic Tickets
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