OEDIPUS | Review
July 1st 2000 00:45
Sydney Theatre Company
presents
Seneca's
OEDIPUS
Adapted by TED HUGHES
CAST
Robert Menzies, Wendy Hughes, Luke Loseby, David Bugeja, Louise Fox, Anthony Phelan, Lynne Murphy, Matthew Whittet, Johnny Lockwood, Rachel Szalay
DIRECTOR Barrie Kosky
COSTUME DESIGNER Brett Chamberlain
LIGHTING DESIGNER Mark Shelton
SOUND DESIGNER Paul Healy
This season opened at Wharf 1, July 1, 2000.
Born in Mytholmroyd, a remote mill town in West Yorkshire, Edward James (Ted) Hughes (1930-1998) was greatly affected by the desolate moorland landscape of his childhood, and by his father's vivid recollections of the brutality of trench warfare. Hughes' father was one of only seventeen men from his regiment to have survived at Gallipoli during the First World War. The Poet Laureate's celebrated life includes two marriages that ended in suicide. It is no wonder that in 1969 he would write an adaption of the great Oedipus myth, and is it little wonder his second wife took her own life and the life of their young child that same year?
The text is dense with repetitive images of the miserable black curse hanging over Thebes since the death of the last King. Set in blackness upon a great furry monolith Oedipus (Robert Menzies) delivers his foetid reflections, a tiny id ensconced in bewildered despair. Paul Healy's sound design includes augmenting the actors voices to great effect churning out grumbles and rages in echoing surround sound.
Barrie Kosky's direction focuses all on the ugly images and stream of internalised agony
Oedipus discovers. Menzies is remarkable in his sustained reasoning. As the story oozes like the black entrails of a gorged cow, Menzies swells in catatonic lilts. The audience are swallowed inside a blackness that extends from the words and bounces off a black ceiling pressing over us all like a membrane of conscience.
The Chorus (Louise Fox) wafts past like the eye of a storm one moment, a cum chocked hooker the next. Creon (Anthony Phelan) is a silvery shining resonance elected to descend into hell and return with answers. His journey is full of bizarre symbols verging on some kind of exquisitely purulent orgy. Jocasta (Wendy Hughes) hovers sylphic, mysterious, distant, her desires always strong and clear.
The production is well concieved and realised. The ensemble work is of the highest standard, but be warned, gloom, doom, tragedy are the themes, this is a bloodless
Oedipus as far as the special effects go. Tribute to Kosky's emerging maturity, the actors deliver the special effects with some help from Mark Shelton, Paul Healy and the masterful words of the poet.
REVIEW by David Paul Jobling
This page was last updated Jul 2 04:54:45 2000
presents
Seneca's
OEDIPUS
Adapted by TED HUGHES
CAST
Robert Menzies, Wendy Hughes, Luke Loseby, David Bugeja, Louise Fox, Anthony Phelan, Lynne Murphy, Matthew Whittet, Johnny Lockwood, Rachel Szalay
DIRECTOR Barrie Kosky
COSTUME DESIGNER Brett Chamberlain
LIGHTING DESIGNER Mark Shelton
SOUND DESIGNER Paul Healy
This season opened at Wharf 1, July 1, 2000.
Born in Mytholmroyd, a remote mill town in West Yorkshire, Edward James (Ted) Hughes (1930-1998) was greatly affected by the desolate moorland landscape of his childhood, and by his father's vivid recollections of the brutality of trench warfare. Hughes' father was one of only seventeen men from his regiment to have survived at Gallipoli during the First World War. The Poet Laureate's celebrated life includes two marriages that ended in suicide. It is no wonder that in 1969 he would write an adaption of the great Oedipus myth, and is it little wonder his second wife took her own life and the life of their young child that same year?
The text is dense with repetitive images of the miserable black curse hanging over Thebes since the death of the last King. Set in blackness upon a great furry monolith Oedipus (Robert Menzies) delivers his foetid reflections, a tiny id ensconced in bewildered despair. Paul Healy's sound design includes augmenting the actors voices to great effect churning out grumbles and rages in echoing surround sound.
Barrie Kosky's direction focuses all on the ugly images and stream of internalised agony
Oedipus discovers. Menzies is remarkable in his sustained reasoning. As the story oozes like the black entrails of a gorged cow, Menzies swells in catatonic lilts. The audience are swallowed inside a blackness that extends from the words and bounces off a black ceiling pressing over us all like a membrane of conscience.
The Chorus (Louise Fox) wafts past like the eye of a storm one moment, a cum chocked hooker the next. Creon (Anthony Phelan) is a silvery shining resonance elected to descend into hell and return with answers. His journey is full of bizarre symbols verging on some kind of exquisitely purulent orgy. Jocasta (Wendy Hughes) hovers sylphic, mysterious, distant, her desires always strong and clear.
The production is well concieved and realised. The ensemble work is of the highest standard, but be warned, gloom, doom, tragedy are the themes, this is a bloodless
Oedipus as far as the special effects go. Tribute to Kosky's emerging maturity, the actors deliver the special effects with some help from Mark Shelton, Paul Healy and the masterful words of the poet.
REVIEW by David Paul Jobling
This page was last updated Jul 2 04:54:45 2000
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