Oedipus at the Old Vic review – Rami Malek and Indira Varma start strong, finish stifled

The opening is dazzling. A chant of Oedipus. A man trapped in a smoky shaft of light, unable to escape his destiny. A blackout and dancers emerging from the gloom, pulsing and writhing to the pounding soundtrack, their changing shapes caught in shifting light, separated by darkness. A final switch to a crouching group. Rami Malek’s white-suited Oedipus emerges from the midst, raised on a gleaming stage.

It’s fabulous, an absolute vindication of this new production of Sophocles’s great tragedy of self-knowledge, co-directed by Matthew Warchus and choreographer Hofesh Shechter who provides not only the dance but also the music. But it can’t sustain the intensity it promises. By the end, there’s not much catharsis and without that, there’s not much tragedy.

Yet en route, there are tantalising glimpses of wonder. This is, of course, the second version of Oedipus that London theatregoers have seen in the past few months. But where Robert Icke’s version (with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville) was political, contemporary and wound as tight as a clock, this is grander and more expansive.

Ella Hickson’s adaptation creates some private scenes between Oedipus and his wife Jocasta (Indira Varma) but retains the idea of their terrible story being played out in public spaces. Tom Visser’s lighting is astonishing, sometimes casting the stage in the bright golden light of the unending drought that has befallen Thebes, sometimes in dark shadows, sometimes in glowing reds.

The characters are posed with stately simplicity in long vistas on Rae Smith’s set of sliding panels and doors that open to reveal vast spaces beyond, and glimpses of the ever-present crowd, the dancers functioning like a traditional chorus, both embellishing and silently commentating on the action, a constant reminder of the unruliness of fate.

Within this dignified frame, Hickson’s script is in contrast, colloquial and even jokey as she shapes the action into a series of oppositions: Jocasta’s extreme rationality against Creon’s zealotry; Oedipus’s belief that he can control the situation, versus the safety of flight; drought and rain; knowledge and ignorance. Interestingly, she emphasises the way fear drives the plot – it is in running away from an oracle’s prediction that he will kill his father and marry his mother that Oedipus brings his doom down upon his head.

“The more unthinkable the solution, the more we are convinced the fear is real,” argues Jocasta, warning against augury and a reliance on divine solutions. In this version, she is the character who emerges with the most to say, her sardonic wit – “oh bring in a blind hermit, that will do it” – and her belief that more knowledge is not always a good thing, contrasting with Oedipus’s constant desire to push things to conclusions, whatever the cost.

All of this is consistently absorbing. Varma’s performance is characteristically intelligent, full of subtle thought and feeling. Malek, making his UK stage debut, begins well, cast as a kind of JFK orator who will offer balm for all society’s ills, but as he disintegrates, he struggles to change gear, and to mine the devastating effects of his odyssey. His lack of emotion is emphasised by a script that choses to offer an unusually tentative ending rather than searing revelation and despair.

Generally, in fact, the production seems to slacken as it progresses; there is not the terrible sense of impending doom, the tension and the emotion seem to deflate rather than rachet up, and the dance becomes too intrusive, puncturing the play’s onward rush to its conclusion.

The supporting cast is however excellent: Cecilia Noble is a wonderfully robust Tiresias, though her character is remodelled in tonally peculiar ways, making her both a vicious seer and a kindly support. Nicholas Khan is a terrifyingly upright Creon, like a Calvinist minister set on judgement, while Joseph Mydell makes the messenger from Corinth a person as well as a plot device.

Overall, it’s a frustrating, uneven production, full of good ideas and powerful images, but ultimately dancing on the surface of Sophocles’s profoundly questing play, never quite piercing to its dark heart.