OEDIPUS REX

OEDIPUS REX, Downstairs at Belvoir St Theatre, 21 August – 14 September 2014. Photography by Pia Johnson, pictured above and left: Peter Carroll.

There seems to be a single question echoing around the raw-bricked chambers of Belvoir at the moment: what happens next? Upstairs, it’s being asked in Nora, Anne-Louise Sarks' follow-up to A Dolls House. 

Downstairs, director Adena Jacobs is taking it as the basis of her new work, Oedipus Rex, a production she describes as a “mediation on the myth” and a “code of symbols”. 

Unfortunately for Jacobs however, if Oedipus Rex is a code, it’s one that is yet to be cracked.

It starts effectively enough: almost as soon as the audience is settled into their seats, the Downstairs Theatre is plunged into absolute darkness. After an agonising wait – is it one minute? Two minutes? 10 minutes? It’s impossible to tell – the lights finally come up on an elderly Oedipus (Peter Carroll) hooked up to an oxygen mask. This is not the riddle-solving Oedipus of Sophocles’ play. This Oedipus is blind, lame and lonely, a scapegoat exiled from his city, weighed down by grief and by the endless burden of his fate.

His only visitor is his daughter and half-sister Antigone (Andrea Demetriades) who arrives to bathe him and engage him in spiteful and one-sided games of Jenga and hide and seek.

In her director’s note, Jacobs writes that tragedy “can only be experienced through the senses”, and as such, her telling of Oedipus’ story is image-based and highly symbolic. 

The initial blackout is followed by several more, which are unsettlingly effective in thrusting us into Oedipus’ sightless world. At one point, the lights come up on a faceless Oedipus contorting himself into the poses of classical Greek sculpture. Soon after, we are subjected to a great blast of bass that leaves seats rattling (sound design by Max Lyandvert). 

It’s obvious Jacobs is trying to immerse us in Oedipus’ suffering, however the disruption only has the opposite effect, making it impossible to engage with what’s unfolding in front of us.

Nonetheless, Carroll makes for an engaging Oedipus in the few lines he has, his every moment heavy with pain and defeat. Likewise, Andrea Demetriades, whose portrayal of the resentful Antigone shifts between spite and occasional vulnerability. 

Both are excellent, yet even these perceptive performances aren’t enough to sustain our interest for long.