Oedipus Reviews – Starring Mark Strong & Lesley Manville

"Lesley Manville and Mark Strong electrify ancient saga turned political thriller"

"Opening in a campaign room on election night, Robert Icke’s modern retelling is riveting from beginning to end, the formidable leads supported by a stellar ensemble cast"

"Icke has modernised Sophocles’ story but kept the ancient names. The statesman, Oedipus, is intent on truth-telling and full disclosure but it is just this that leads to his downfall."

"Mark Strong as the upstanding, self-righteous Oedipus opposite Lesley Manville as a breezy and dynamic Jocasta, first set us on the edge of our seats and then set the stage on fire. They have a stellar ensemble around them"

"Hildegard Bechtler’s realist set gradually becomes emptier until the final blood-letting, which brings visceral shock and a symbolic, windy emptiness."

"The classicist John Tresidder Sheppard deemed Sophoclean language “hard to analyse, impossible to translate”. Icke has done an astonishing job in both departments. An old play is masterfully analysed and made newly devastating."

"Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are superb in stunning staging of Oedipus"

"Robert Icke’s adaptation at Wyndham’s Theatre brilliantly remakes the disturbing tragedy for our time"

"Led by superb performances from Strong and Manville, Icke brilliantly remakes Sophocles’ profoundly disturbing tragedy for our times."

"Icke’s staging buzzes with resonance in a world where truth is a contested commodity and politicians promising change stride across the public domain, where arguments rage about who belongs and who doesn’t. But it also goes much deeper. It reaches far into the nagging question of how much any of us really want to know"

"It’s beautifully delivered by a terrific ensemble, at the heart of which sit Manville and Strong, who track their shifting relationship with precise and desolate physicality. She’s outstanding: when she realises — before he does — the agonising truth, it’s almost unbearable to watch. Strong, who begins the evening bullish and brusque, gradually declines until he ends, curled on the floor like a foetus."

"Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are spellbinding in this wrenchingly tense Greek tragedy"

"Strong is superb and surely there’s no better actress working today than Manville"

"Strong’s smart, passionate, utterly believable relationship with the luminous Manville as his older wife Jocasta roots the unravelling suspense as a rear-stage digital clock ticks down to Oedipus’s election victory."

"A fine supporting cast, and the familiar Icke tools of dialogue that sounds both antique and modern, and a dislocating soundtrack, are used to brilliant effect. At the risk of blurting out the worst-kept spoiler in theatre history, this show is mother**in’ good."

"Lesley Manville and Mark Strong are stunning in Robert Icke’s compassionate political thriller spin on the horrifying Greek tragedy"

"If they ever stopped horrifying us we’d stop staging them, but the Ancient Greeks were basically sicker bastards than everyone else in all of history. And so we love them"

"Icke can do fiddly and complicated when the mood suits him (it often does) but as with his phenomenal 2015 adaptation of the Oresteia, his Oedipus benefits from a lethal but empathetic decluttering, a singularity of purpose that distils a famously lurid story into something empathetic, lucid and quite, quite devastating."

"Things of course get very grim at the end. The jokes fall away. But as it all slips into ruin, Icke’s play remains defiantly humane, a graceful, elegiac note sidestepping the WTAF nature of the final revelations. There’s an incredible scene where Strong’s Oedipus and Manville’s Jocasta numbly get changed for the victory party, simply too overwhelmed by revelation to do anything else, their minds genuinely blown."

"It’s not the audacious invention of absolute peak Icke, but it is, nonetheless, really bloody good, with two astonishing leads."

"Lesley Manville is at the height of her powers"

"She is magnetic and magnificent as Jocasta in this startling modern retelling"

"Strong offers a gripping portrait of someone so consumed by a relentless, almost childlike, quest for the truth that he fails to spot the grim reality of his actual origin story as it ruinously unfurls before him Fine as Strong is, this is without a doubt Manville’s evening. This glorious actress, now at the height of her powers, is magnetic and magnificent in the mastery with which she peels back the complex layers of Jocasta’s personality, revealing her to be loving and open but with a core of steel."

"One can quibble at some minor details: surely Oedipus and Jocasta would have discussed the precise – but all-important – circumstances of her late husband’s murky death before this night? Yet overall the mighty momentum of the tragedy is thrilling in its grim inexorability."

"Mark Strong and Lesley Manville star in a tantalisingly fresh take on the Greek tragedy"

"Writer and director Robert Icke reinvents the well-known story as a taut political thriller"

"Writer and director Robert Icke’s brilliant reimagining of Oedipus achieves the monumental feat of taking a Greek drama where (almost) everyone thinks they know what’s going to happen, and turning it into an exercise in tension, one that etches its message with the painful efficiency of a tattoo gun."

"This Oedipus rose to power by promising to blast away hypocrisy and keep no secrets, but now his shining castle of principles is assailed by the blunt battering ram of his own past."

"Icke deliberately follows ancient Greek dramatic tradition by setting his play in a single space, the action spooling out in real time – which makes its eventual departure from convention yet another shock. The truth is literally blinding, here – and deafening, too – but he makes it impossible to look away, even for a moment."

"Riveting"

"Robert Icke’s contemporary take on the tragedy is stylish and shattering"

"Celebrated director Robert Icke’s bold and affecting reworking of Sophocles’ pivotal ancient drama"

"The reframing of the story works well, even if some of the sharp contemporary symbolism has lost its edge since the original run: Oedipus is dogged by ‘birther’ conspiracies and pressured to release a birth certificate; his campaign posters feature an instantly recognisable Obama-era ‘hope’ graphic."

"In the title role, Mark Strong is a coolly charismatic leader, self-assured and armed with an edge of ferocious righteousness, an unquestioning commitment to honesty that will ultimately undo him. When it does, he implodes, curling into a foetal position, sobbing helplessly for his mum. As Jocasta, Lesley Manville explores profound depths and nuances. She entirely owns the play’s most shattering moments"

"The progress of Robert Icke’s devastating modern-day version of Oedipus is from ceaseless noise to stunned silence."

"It’s quite a tribute to a Greek tragedy, written nearly 2,500 years ago, that it can still surprise. But, as he showed with his magnificent adaptation of the Oresteia in 2015, Icke knows exactly how to create a realistic, involving drama while allowing the prefiguring dramatic irony of the language"

"The result, helped by magnificent performances from Strong and Lesley Manville as his wife Jocasta, is as gripping as a thriller, yet weighted with the terrible sense (emphasised in a surprisingly tender epilogue) of what might have been."

"An eager to impress staging of a modern classic"

"Mark Strong and Lesley Manville’s pairing adds to an evening with no shortage of star power at Wyndham’s Theatre in London"

"In London, it’s harder to overlook the incongruities in a piece that re-imagines the ancient ruler as a manicured politician in a world of soundbites and spin doctors. Any opportunity to see Mark Strong — who takes the title role previously played by Hans Kesting — has to be seized with both hands. And with Lesley Manville portraying his wife Jocasta, this is an evening with no shortage of star power, although in the end it’s the veteran June Watson who shines brightest of all as the granite-faced matriarch Merope."

"But the first requirement of a tragedy, surely, is that it should hold an audience transfixed: if we feel manipulated, tension seeps away. You couldn’t help noticing tonight that too many of Icke’s attempts to drag the story into modern times prompted ripples of knowing laughter from the stalls."

"Strong and Manville make a compelling pair. The lengthy confessional where Jocasta reveals the truth about her past as the teenage plaything of the dead Laius generates real intensity."

"Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are agonising, but it’s too little, too late"

"Robert Icke’s free adaptation of the Sophoclean tragedy ought to grip with sickening implacability, but fails to do so until the climax."

"Oedipus the play ought to grip with sickening implacability from the moment Oedipus the man becomes determined to uncover the truth of his predecessor Laius’s death out of a stubbornly virtuous faith in the sanctity of honesty at all costs. For all the clock’s doomy marking down, this production fails to exert that grip for lengthy periods of time. The liberal use of ironic foreshadowing in the dialogue – references to mothers, knowledge and the like abound – come across as more of a knowing comic device than a horrifying tragic one."