Oedipus w/Mark Strong & Lesley Manville - Wyndham’s

Yes, it's a very badly thought out version. Icke is a first-rate director but he botched up Schnitzler with The Doctor and now it's Sophocles getting butchered by his third-rate pen. 

The modernisation detracts from the dramatic power inherent in the concept of fate which is a mistake in the first place but this is compounded by the fact this is not supplanted by anything else in the narrative.

By modernising you have to introduce some meaningful plot in the present that interlocks with the revelations from the past. Instead we have the main plot in the present day being an election that is already over bar the counting which never takes any twists and turns and a lot of expository backstory that is indeed rendered fundamentally silly taken from its original context and dropped into another context for no good reason.

At best it's style over substance but it's a huge drop off from what he did with Oresteia and Simon Stone's Phaedra more recently was both more substantive and more stylish.

This production is bad enough to make you question if Icke really knows what he's doing at all, and his upcoming play at the Royal Court written without any help from Schnitzler or Sophocles must have the potential to be a huge misfire.

I was at the matinee today and found this to be utterly gripping, with spellbinding performances from Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. The lustful chemistry between them made the denoument very powerful indeed. These are difficult roles but they were so skillfully handled that I totally suspended any disbelief. Manville was terrific in particular. June Watson was off but was very ably replaced by Celia Nelson, who was Juliet Stevenson's understudy in The Doctor.

Is there an interval? I was to.d it’s 2hrs straight through. Could you confirm please

DP in reverse action: cracking stalls seats for £62 and £82 for tonight (down from £200) - get 'em before the walk ups do ..

tickets.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/seating-plan.asp?ShoID=3915&PI=142012

There are often groups in the Grand Circle. I take groups of university students and we always sit in the GC. Every time I have been the GC has been sold out.

Lesley Manville not performing on evening performances of 9, 12 and 16 Nov

I saw her understudy, Celia Nelson, last night and thought she was fantastic. She understudies for both Merope and Jocasta but definitely is more suited to Jocasta. She and Mark Strong had great chemistry. The timing with the clock was a little off but you wouldn't notice if you hadn't seen the show previously.

Thought this was truly excellent. Having waited for this production a long time (maybe the play most delayed by the pandemic yet), I probably had unreasonably high expectations going in but this met all of those. Probably one of the best nights I’ve had in a theatre, thrilling in every sense of the word.

How did you notice that?

As with everything with Icke, his ideas aren’t original, rather borrowed.

Use of a visible countdown clock to a big event in a play became widespread in German theatre quite a few years ago. German/European theatre is where Icke gets many of “his” ideas.

For those who saw it you’ll recall Macbeth used this device a few years ago.

The timing is done by the stage management nudging the time forward accordingly, using set cues, and as someone has said above, at moments when the audience are distracted, as the big moment come closer.

Sometimes this still results in the actors being slightly ahead of the action, but ensures they are never behind it. Actors with stagecraft like Manville and Strong can always fill the gap of that moment when they’re ahead.

I'd like to think German experimental theatre took this idea from Noele Gordon and 'Crossroads' (riding the episode length, as depicted in TV Drama 'Nolly').  Icke is just bringing it back home.  ; )