'Oedipus' review — Indira Varma and Rami Malek star in a stylish yet diluted version of this Greek tragedy

Read our review of Oedipus, starring Indira Varma and Rami Malek, now in performances at the Old Vic Theatre through 29 March.

Last year, it was announced on the same day that two productions of Sophocles’s great tragedy Oedipus would come to London: the first a long-awaited version starring Lesley Manville and Mark Strong, stalled by Covid and directed by Robert Icke; the other, an Old Vic staging with Indira Varma and Rami Malek in the incestuous roles of mother/wife and son/husband.

The two shows may bear the same name but the similarities end there, with Ella Hickson’s awkwardly adapted Old Vic Oedipus prioritising a stylised aesthetic over the play’s horrifying narrative arc which, in most productions, ends in a reveal so shattering, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen it on stage before.

The most noteworthy part of this Oedipus isn’t its two central performances by Malek and Varma, but the introduction of a dance troupe in place of a traditional chorus, choreographed by the acclaimed Hofesh Shechter.

There is no doubting Shechter’s skill as a choreographer: in the gloom of Tom Visser’s lighting, his dancers pop, lock, and ripple, moving in perfect coordination with each other. The lights cut to black and they’re in a new formation, never out of step, dancing with urgency and passion. It’s all very cool, as though the dancers are in a club dance battle, aided by Christopher Shutt’s thudding sound design. The effect is hypnotic, particularly in the breathless opening sequence, but it also helps to distract from shortcomings in the ‘theatre’ portion of this production.

Malek’s Oedipus shares many similarities with his Bond villain in No Time to Die. He is creepy and strange, speaking in an American drawl, which has an odd, uncomfortable intensity. When he clasps the head of his daughter Antigone, pulls her in for an embrace, and says “love you”, it feels jarring. Something that is cleverly drawn out in Hickson’s version is Oedipus’s intense fear of prophecies — a fear that threatens instability and eventually bubbles over into insanity.

He is rattled by the prophecy that says King Laius’s murderer must be found to end the drought in Thebes, immediately abandoning thoughts of fleeing his city and listening to the tape recorder delivering those fateful words on repeat. When grief consumes him after learning his (adoptive) father Polybus, King of Corinth has died, Oedipus reveals that another prophecy — that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother — has kept him from visiting Corinth for many years.

Varma gives Jocasta more agency in this production, speaking up in front of the people of Thebes and instructing them to leave the city, issuing sharp-tongued retorts to her brother Creon, and even mocking her husband’s decision to summon Tiresias, a blind prophet: “Bring in a raging hermit, that’ll do it.”

Varma is regal and graceful, a figure of stately composure as she drifts about the stage in a flowing red gown. The performance is very similar to her recent stage role as Lady Macbeth alongside Ralph Fiennes at Dock X. Then, as well as now, there is an issue with chemistry between the two leads: Varma and Malek appear too similar in age and unlike Strong and Manville’s performance, there is little passion. It means the reveal of Oedipus’s true parentage doesn’t hit home as it should, and when the dancers drift in, a mass of bodies praising the rainfall that marks Oedipus’s banishment and fulfilment of the prophecy, all dramatic tension is washed away.

Hickson’s adaptation dilutes so much of what makes this story horrify and shock audiences 2,500 years after its publication. But it is certainly stylish.

Check back for Oedipus tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Indira Varma and Rami Malek in Oedipus. (Photos by Manuel Harlan)