Mark Strong & Lesley Manville set the stage on fire.
It’s 40 degrees in New York. I was standing outside my hotel debating if I wanted dumplings in Chinatown or to head to Chelsea. Standing there talking to myself I see an ad on the wall across the street. It’s a really great photo of Mark Strong. I’m here for something else, but who can pass him up and Lesley Manville is his costar?
I know what Oedipus is about, but I feel a pull to go. I decide on the dumplings and over a much needed bowl of dumpling soup with an additional half dozen on the side, I decide I have to go. I lucked into one of the last tickets left for the next day.
I arrive on time and head to my section. I see a lot of familiar faces in the lobby. I don’t know how long this show has been out, but people came out to see it. I did a tally and I was the only Tongan there. Representation matters. I watched it for all of us, but mostly for me.
The performance opens with a large film screen showing a news segment of Oedipus talking to the press about his run for office. He jokes that due to his ambiguous good looks his opponents label him as “other” and since he knows himself to be a citizen he will release his birth certificate upon winning his candidacy. This gets a laugh from the audience. It’s reminiscent of an issue our former President faced and everyone sees the elephant in the room for this guy. Icke’s use of the screen worked great for the opening. The way movies focus us, that opening let us know these characters exist in a world much larger than the stage we will see them on, and it also flexed that they were stage actors and solid movie stars.
The entire play takes place in the living area of their campaign headquarters. The energy is that Oedipus will win. Confession time: I always found the play ick and so I never watched it all the way through. I knew the gist and kept on going. A 2,500 year old play was revitalized into a political thriller and I was there for it.
Strong’s Oedipus is basically an Obama with the charisma of all the gen-x politicians we like. The guy is solid and when issues with his birth and background come up, he just wants to know the truth. You feel bad for him.
Jacosta, played by Manville like a champion is someone you root for. I don’t know how she’s been portrayed for the past two millennia, but tonight she was just someone that had built something with her husband and twists of fate reared up and blew it all away.
There’s a clock on the wall counting down to the end of voting time when the winner is revealed. It took me to about the 30-minute mark to realize the countdown wasn’t for the end of the election, but for the reveal. Things got tense in the audience.
Because I never sat through the play or paid attention to it, I was hoping for some sort of a modern-day happy ending. That didn’t happen. If you don’t have psychologists with degrees from TikTok in your friends circle that might have dropped this guy’s name and you haven’t read or watched the play, I won’t ruin the ending for you.
By the reveal I was openly crying as was half the audience. I’ll put it like this; if you haven’t done anything wrong, but something out of your control has been revealed, is that enough to take away from everything you’ve built? Icke gave Oedipus a clean slate, by making a few of the traditional characters unbeknownst to him. It was like we were solving the riddle together.
The pacing of this show and the lead up to the climax made the audience fall silent. The applause was thunderous, the crowd walking out was a combination of shattered and inspired.
People waited in the lobby to greet the actors, but I needed to immediately walk out to Broadway and vape my way back to my hotel.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t realize the vendor charged me $12 for each hot dog. I do not look like a tourist, how dare he rip me off like one? I was too lazy to walk back, but it happens. It was a great NYC night.
