Spoiler alert: Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. But in Robert Icke’s contemporary adaptation of the 2,400-year-old Greek tragedy, the real surprise is how long it takes to get there.
Now at Studio 54, “Oedipus” arrives as the fall season’s prestige import from abroad, bringing with it an imposing cast led by Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. It’s sharply acted and conceptually ambitious. But the extended pacing dilutes the speed and compression that define Sophocles’ original.
The result is an evening that begins with real promise and striking immediacy before settling into something more deliberate, even as it inches toward revelations the audience knows are coming.
The adaptation relocates Sophocles’ tragedy to election night in a generic Western democracy that looks vaguely British. It opens with a filmed press conference in which Oedipus (Mark Strong), once an outsider now poised for a landslide victory, vows full transparency: he will release his birth certificate and reopen the long-closed investigation into the death of his predecessor, Laius. It’s an updated spin on the ancient inciting actions that set him on a collision course with truths he is unprepared to face.
Once the curtain rises, a sleek, sterile campaign headquarters becomes the single setting for the play’s unfolding. Staffers, family members, and uneasy bystanders drift through the room as an onstage digital clock ticks down the minutes to when the election results will be announced. This staging creates early tension, but the constant visibility of the clock soon dominates the experience, making the play feel longer and slower than its two hours and ten minutes already suggest.
Figures from Sophocles appear here with modern inflections. Teiresias, the blind prophet who traditionally arrives to warn Oedipus of the awful truth, is now a young, strange visitor (Samuel Brewer), whose cryptic pronouncements are dismissed as the ramblings of an unstable intruder.
Creon (John Carroll Lynch), Oedipus’ brother-in-law, is rewritten as his exasperated campaign strategist. Jocasta (Manville), Oedipus’ wife and Laius’ widow, is not merely a queen but a veteran political spouse, polished, charming, and practiced at managing a husband whose impulses can swing from noble to reckless.
The adaptation contains hints of the rest of the Theban cycle: Oedipus’ three grown children — Antigone (Olivia Reis), Polyneices (James Wilbraham), and Eteocles (Jordan Scowen) — each embody the tensions and rivalries that will dominate the later myths. Their inclusion deepens the family dynamic but also stretches the narrative away from the austere focus that makes Sophocles’ play so concentrated.
Manville stands out among the strong ensemble, charting her character’s gradual descent into terror with emotional precision that remains captivating even when the script becomes repetitive. Strong gives a steely performance as a man convinced he can manage any crisis until he discovers the one truth he cannot outrun. His scenes with Manville, particularly late in the evening as the final pieces lock into place, contain the rawest energy of the production.
What the adaptation reflects about today’s political world is sometimes revealing and sometimes murky. The notion that a leader’s image rests on a story they tell about themselves — and that truth, once uncovered, can collapse the entire façade — resonates strongly. Yet the production keeps contemporary parallels at arm’s length, preferring the atmosphere of a political thriller to a more thorough examination of modern power.
Still, there’s no denying the quality of the performances or the clarity of Icke’s concept. The revelations land exactly where expected, and the final moments achieve a grim inevitability. But for a tragedy built on speed, shock, and the brutal economy of fate, this “Oedipus” ultimately takes its time — and the audience not only feels every passing minute but sees it flashing on the countdown clock.
Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., oedipustheplay.com. Through Feb. 8.
