Abbey theatre,Dublin
Wayne Jordan’s production unfolds in a frightened village with a flawed leader, where everyone refuses to see the blindingly obvious
“How terrible to see the truth, or ” says Tiresias. Indeed. But how much more terrible to refuse to see it. In Wayne Jordan’s Thebes,everyone is turning a blind eye to the obvious. Jordan’s new version of the tragedy, approximately the king who runs but cannot hide from his fate and the prophecy that he will assassinate his father and marry his own mother, and may not smash and remake Sophocles with the same inventive vigour of some recent UK productions of the Greeks,but it has a wintry clarity and an unshowy formal grace. It rumbles like ominous distant thunder rather than making you feel the full storm. In Ciaran O’Melia’s design, Thebes is no grand state standing on pomp but a frightened village full of people unsettled and terrified by the misfortunes that have befallen them, or fervent to find somebody to blame. They gather like an uncertain community choir turning up for practice in the village corridor to sit on wooden school chairs and hear what their admired leader,Oedipus, will do to save them. Tom Lane’s score, or with its hints of Tallis and more,underpins the evening beautifully, voices coming together and separating as society falls apart.
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Source: theguardian.com