Dance in Greek tragedy – why not? The ancient Athenians did it, their choruses a weave of sound and movement, though no one really knows what shapes they threw back in the fifth century. They probably didn’t give the hands-in-the-air delirium of Hofesh Shechter’s spectacular dancers in this new version of Oedipus – but dance becomes the irresistible core of the tragedy.
Shechter and Matthew Warchus co-direct a text by Ella Hickson (The Writer). In a freak of scheduling, they follow Robert Icke’s inexorable modern-dress Oedipus: two very different takes on Sophocles’ family values.
Here, Thebes gasps with drought under a harsh red sun and Tom Visser’s lighting, a dust storm in charcoal and crimson. King Oedipus resolves to save his people, either by leading them to fertile ground or solving the ancient murder that a faction of hardline believers argue has angered the gods. Big mistake, huge.
Rami Malek’s air of having dropped from another planet has served him well on film as a Bond villain or Freddie Mercury. He brings outsider vibes to Oedipus – speaking in an elusive American drawl, adopting the mantle of leadership like a haunted robot.
Confession later fractures his speech – he becomes shambling, disjointed, bones awkwardly resettling in his body. The truth remakes Oedipus, and then undoes him.
Oedipus claims to lead with “courage, conviction and ingenuity” – the very qualities which brought him to power will destroy him as he stubbornly pursues his terrible identity.
As the state’s climate change emergency is derailed by a cold case, he sifts through box files and summons the prophet Tiresias. “Bring in a raving hermit, that’ll do it,” scoffs his wife, Jocasta – though Cecilia Noble makes a strikingly disgruntled seer, feet planted wide, unleashing the truth in a wide-mouthed cackle.
Shechter’s soundtrack of fervent chants and wild drums rattles the Old Vic’s plasterwork, volume rising like panic, and his dancers are on fire. They’re mosh pit ecstatics – hands raised in plea or pleasure, lolloping, squirming. They scrabble, shuffle or form a serpentine scrawl of bodies.
There’s no literal transposition of Sophocles’ choruses – no dance equivalent of “call no man happy till he dies” – but their delirium leeches into your blood. You feel them lost in the stomp, consumed by physical impulses even as Oedipus struggles to unwind a mystery.
“People need to struggle with nuance and difficulty,” Oedipus huffs. But while the movement offers a superb, needling ambiguity, Hickson’s text is parched. She struggles to find a resonant public register (“we feel your pain”) or an intimacy for her private scenes: “Darkness is the soil in which I nurture my humility” sounds like a shonky translation. Indira Varma’s elegantly sceptical queen (cheekbones, pashmina) gets the best lines, resisting her brother Creon (Nicholas Khan), a black-clad theocrat with an itch for power.
The ancient pollution is named and rain falls again. The blissed-out chorus spin, feet raising happy spumes of water – they appear fundamentally unbothered by the destructive, seamy dynamics of the royal drama. You’re left with a sense of futility – what has it all been for, the destructive pursuit of truth, the secrets and cries?
At the Old Vic theatre, London, until 29 March
