Tear out your eyes
Oedipus
By Seneca
Directed by Barrie Kosky
Sydney Theatre Company
The Wharf
REVIEW BY MARK STOYICH
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC-65AD) was tutor and close friend to the emperor Nero, until Nero told him to kill himself, so who better to provide the text for direction by Barrie Kosky, the Nero of Australian theatre (or is it the Caligula?). And what's more, a play about the ultimate dysfunctional family.
Showing Kosky a play about a dysfunctional family is like showing a baby to a dingo, and he rips and tears at it with the same enthusiasm that he brought to Moliere's Tartuffe and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.
This is not the better-known Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, famous for its admirable structure. This is the one (and I quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica) that's "intended for play-reading rather than public presentation", whose "pitch is a high monotone, emphasising the lurid and the supernatural. There are impressive set speeches ... but the characters are static, and they rant."
That's it in a nutshell, really. Add the fact that it was adapted by the blood- and doom-obsessed British poet Ted Hughes, and you have the perfect Barrie Kosky night at the theatre.
Kosky sets the whole two-and-a-half-hours-with-no-interval in a black padded cell. Oedipus, King of Thebes, is presented as a maniac, raving his lines and, presumably, imagining the other characters. A horrible pestilence has visited the land and various ghosts must be consulted and corpses dragged up from their graves to ascertain why. (The gods are angry because Oedipus unwittingly killed his father and married his mother — or have I given something away?) In expiation, Oedipus tears out his own eyes.
The biggest concern in the Australian theatre today is, how to get the kids in? The young are indifferent to the legitimate theatre, and rich in other distractions, so there is a fear that the audience will one day simply die out.
Barrie Kosky has done more to try to attract the young to the theatre than any other Australian director, by not respecting conventions. He does his best to avoid coming up with something that looks like television. The intention is admirable — but instead he comes up with something like a bad science fiction video.
While he can devise some strong images, he is not good with text — very much like Seneca. I fear that this sort of thing will alienate those who genuinely like theatre, while not attracting a young audience — who could not normally afford the price of a seat anyway.
The good news is that the Wharf sells tickets to under-30s for $23 on Mondays and Tuesdays. The bad news is the choice of material — how can this gruesome old myth, once so central to our culture, be made relevant to the dot.com generation? Why did Kosky choose it?
Still, he should keep trying <197 the theatre was full of youngpeople the night I went <193> one of whom, while Oedipus was in mid rant, pulled out his mobile to check his messages. At worst, the audience can tear out their own eyes.